


Disillusioned

by cafeanna



Category: Twilight, Twilight Series - All Media Types
Genre: Bella Speaks With Her Fellow Women, Bella Swan with a Backbone, But Gentle Bashing, Cheating, Do We Want Her To Fall In Love?, Edward Cullen Bashing, F/M, Forgiveness, I am in CRISIS, I am making these characters ALIVE again, Lots of Conversations That Should Have Happen, One-Sided Attraction, Tell Me, i am in hell, join me in hell, or maybe ALIVE for the first time
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-31
Updated: 2019-08-29
Packaged: 2019-10-19 20:46:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 28,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17608667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cafeanna/pseuds/cafeanna
Summary: Alice was Demetri’s mate before she was Jasper’s. Edward still stands that a vampire can only have one mate per lifetime. Demetri seeks vindication.Or, Bella Swan realizes that the Cullens are possibly, probably, most likely, not perfect.[Alice/Demetri, Kinda-Edward/Bella]





	1. Chapter 1

The door swings open and in a brilliant haze of diamond-kissed skin and heat, Alice sweeps into the room, a pliant, persistent smile on her lips. “C’mon boys,” she says in her musical voice. She slips off her sunglasses and pulls aside her scarf. “We wouldn’t want to be _seen,_ now would we?”

The door shutting behind her echoes through the marble hall.

“ _Alice,_ ” Her name comes out as a hiss, for a moment, Bella is not sure from which guard, but the shorter, blonder one, pulls aside his hood. His high, imposing air seeming to dissipate around them. His eyes are huge, red, and _intent._

Alice raises her tiny chin, as if matching him as she smiles, pleasantly, if not a bit forced. “Hello Demetri.”

“Alice,” This time the voice comes from Edward; she can hear it echoing from his chest. “Take Bella and go enjoy the festival.”

“ _No._ ” Both Alice and the other vampire—Demetri—step forward, in a blink to fast for Bella to see. It startles her, heart hammering in her chest. Alice puts her back to her, acting as a barrier between Bella and the guards.

“That’s not how this works, Cullen. You know that.” The taller guard says, but his comment goes largely unheard as Alice and Demetri stare each other down.

“I am walking out of here,” Alice says softly. “I will walk out of these doors and I will not come back to Volterra.”

The guard’s lips twitch slightly, a kick of a smirk pulling at the corner of his cheek. “We’ll see about that.” Bella watches Alice’s body go ridged.

-

Later, Alice saves them again with a vision of the future—their future, Bella’s. She sees her as a vampire, sleek and beautiful, dangerous and glorious as the rest of them. As she lays her dainty palm in Aro’s hand, Bella wishes she could see this vision of the future even more than ever.

The future is not a fixed thing, it is like clay. Pliant, moving with the shape of wishes and actions. Bella always felt that if she wished enough, it would be so.

The Tracker, as Aro introduced Demetri as, steps closer as Alice draws back from Aro. She bumps into his chest and seems almost _startled_ by him.

“Ah, it seems that our Demetri still misses you, _mio caro._ ” Aro folds his hands in deep supplication. “It tears at my heart every day to watch him wander, mateless, directionless. However, his loyalties still lie with our house. Thank Heavens for the smaller blessings.”

Alice tips her chin up, gazing into twin pools of red. She looks impossibly young then, young and vulnerable looking into the eyes of the Tracker, but she is not looking at him with fear. Bella folds her arms against herself, shivering.

“She still cares for you, Demetri, very much.”

Still locked in Felix’s arms, Edward makes a moan of pain, but otherwise says nothing. Bella trembles amongst the cool marble statues, eyes turning teary and wide.

-

The Volterra secretary brings her a cup of tea. Bella can barely summon a polite ‘thank you’ before she remembers where she is—which is Italy—and how grounded she will be when Charlie realizes she is gone—which should be soon, if Jake can help it, she thinks.

She leans back into Edward’s embrace, needing the cool assurance of his body against hers. She needs to _feel_ him, know that he is _there._ The contrast of the hot tea and Edward’s cool marble skin, make it real. His lips skim her shoulder. “Rest, Bella.” He whispers against her sweater and Bella almost pulls back a little out of modesty.

She is wearing a s _weater,_ in _Italy,_ and despite the air conditioning, she highly doubts that she smells nice. Hell, she must _look_ even worse. If he did not want her when she actually made an effort, then he obvious would not want her now.

A knot of self-consciousness forms in her throat and Bella curls her hands around her mug, breathing deeply and thinking.

“Where’s Alice?” she asks, hoping to deflect. Despite it all, despite Edward not wanting her, she is still terrified that he will disappear, like smoke through her fingers. Bella swallows a mouthful of tea to clear her throat, it burns hot and honey-sweet all the way down. “I haven’t seen since we left the, um, throne room.”

She doesn’t miss the way Edward’s brows pinch in concentration and then pull away, as if repulsed. “Alice . . . is dealing with Demetri.”

“Do they . . . know each other?”

“They used to be close.”

Bella thinks back to the way Demetri looked at her, the awe and fury pooling in those eyes as he loomed over Alice. “Close.” Bella repeats and Edward’s brow crinkles again.

“Alice can handle him, Bella.” His hand passes over her hair, and his thumb sets to her temple. “You should get some rest.”

Bella continues to drink her tea, peppering questions every few minutes as Edward continued to rub her shoulders, or neck, or temples. This annoys Felix enough to make him leave the room, but just as quickly Alice enters, looking prim and radiant and ready to leave.

“I’ve arranged for a car to take us to the airport.” She says quickly and Bella is sure that if she were human, she would be out of breath. “We should be in Florence by six and ready for take off by nine. We can get a change of clothes and a dinner for Bella. I have been trying to—”

Edward’s voice, which had been quiet and soft since the throne room, broke Alice’s tirade. He seemed to be barely controlling rage when he spoke. “Alice, you _didn’t_.” He whispers furiously, but whatever he saw in Alice’s mind must have confirmed his suspicions. He moves to his feet, Bella startles again, still clinging to his robe and her mug goes flying.

It is snatched up by Felix, who catches it with relative ease and winks at her. “Can’t say this happens all the time.” Bella shifts in her seat until he’s not in her sight.

Edward is on his feet, the red robe the Volturi gave him pooling to the ground. “How could you? How could you do this to Jasper?”

“Say whatever you want to me Edward, but we need to go. _Now._ ” Alice breezes past them towards the hall and Edward leans down, scooping Bella up in the same gesture before following Alice down the hall.

Gianna and Felix both give her a little wave as they pass into darkness. “ _Arrivadercci,_ sweetheart. I’ll be seeing you soon.”


	2. Chapter 2

Bella does not get the story till later that Alice used to be mates with the Volterran Tracker.

This revelation, along with the revelation that Alice fucked said Tracker during their brief stint in Volterra, is not the hardest pill to swallow that week. It erupts into much fighting between Edward and Alice on the way home, through first class where Bella clings onto wakefulness if only to get scarps and pieces of the story while still clinging onto Edward’s shirt.

“You were disloyal to Jasper.” Edward says blithely. “You made vows to be loyal to him, and you _broke_ them.”

The stewardess circles their row again, eyes sweeping over them, but neither siblings nor Bella deign her with a reassuring smile as she ambles past. In fact, they rarely break to parry even with human ears within reach. Alice has been playing a solid defense of _you don’t understand_ and _drop it, Edward, I mean it_ since the gift shop, but with the flight’s end in sight, it seems the fight is also drawing to a close.

Alice does not even look away from her window. “Don’t talk to me about loyalty, Edward. _You_ were the jackass that left Bella to die in the woods when you broke up.”

Alice says it so casually, so carelessly, it is as if she threw the words like her silk scarf into the air. _Arrivederci_ indeed.

The words hit she like a semi, a twelve-car collision to the chest and Bella is left gasping on her apple juice. Edward spares her a glance and is about to jump into another flawless argument, when Alice snaps—“You put her in unnecessary danger because your dramatic ass simply _had_ to take her out to the woods, leave her where she couldn’t find her way out. Seriously, you want to preach to me? _You_?”

The wind catches them in some turbulence and Bella—for the first time in nearly twenty-four hours—unattached herself from Edward and rises shakily to her feet. “Bathroom,” she mumbles, not worrying if they can hear her, or if they care as she zigzags down the aisle towards the door.

-

If Jasper takes the news well, Bella does not know because Jasper skips town by the time they arrive in Forks. Alice is heartbroken. Edward is self-righteous. Bella near brain-dead from sleep deprivation.

“I _saw_ you destroy your phone!” Alice screams in the baggage claim, her hands hooked into claws and her eyes pinched. If she were able to, Bella was sure there would be tears in her eyes. Instead she is complete in her perfection, voice like music, pain like an anguished angel; even as the paint bubbles and peels back, she’s _lovely_ and it’s _unnerving_. “I s _aw_ it!”

Edward slips Bella’s phone back into her pocket.

-

After she gets some rest, not much but some, she manages to have a conversation with Edward about boundaries and taking her things and sneaking into her bedroom. These are all no-no’s. She is too tired to be dazzled by his amused expression and presses down the law. “I mean it,” she says, waking up. “If we’re going to make this work, you have to respect my space—”

“What?”

Bella blinks. “I said, if we’re going to make this work.”

“I heard that Bella.”

“I know that.” She replies, dumbly.

“What do you mean by it?” He reiterates. “Are you saying that you still want to be with me even after everything I put you through?”

Bella blinks once, twice. “Well, you’re going to have to make it up to me.” She shifts on her bed. “And respect my stuff. No more taking my camera or photos or phone. Don’t do that just because you can! It’s disrespectful to me and it tells me you don’t understand boundaries.”

“I get boundaries.”

Bella snorts. “Yeah, we’re going to have a talk about _that_ too.”

-

Alice doesn’t return to school when Edward does, but she doesn’t stave off the excuse of college and early acceptance like Emmett and Rosalie did either. The official story is that she is taking time off school to focus on her health. No one asks about Jasper.

Bella knows better than to do so.

“I wanted to come back,” Alice says one night when Bella invites her over. The two of them are sitting downstairs, TV playing as Charlie snores and Alice pretends not to be there. “Edward broke away from us because my visions of you were so full of pain. God, Bella, why didn’t you _move_? Do something? Be human?”

Bella studies Alice’s pixie-like features in the glow of the television. Her face is the same, goldenrod eyes and ashy black hair and moon pale skin. She has never changed, but she is so, so different somehow that Bella has to tilt her head to look at her.

She doesn’t seem as perfect anymore.

She’s not flawless, untouchable, unmovable—

Alice’s lips pressed into a line. Her eyes are glazed for a moment before they snap back with intense focus. “You’re about to say something _very_ mean, and I didn’t like it.”

“Was it honest?” Bella asks.

“Yes,” Alice says after a long moment. “Yes, it was.”

Bella pulls her afghan tighter around her. “Tell me about Demetri.” And Alice, not seeming to expect this, balks. Bella has been gathering a quiet study since Volterra—the ex mate that Alice left for America (Edward), a Tracker (Aro), a ‘prissy fuckin’ Italian’ (Emmett), and someone that loved Alice very dearly, deeply, obsessively.

“He was,” Alice looks wistful a moment and studies the television and the game show that drones on in the distance. She seems to fixate on it for a second, brow crunching as if puzzling over the answer. Bella almost thinks that she might dodge the question, but Alice says, flatly, “He _is_ the only man I never saw coming.”

-

Bella decides to leave a message with Billy, “Could you tell Jake to call me? I just went to make sure that my ex-boyfriend didn’t commit suicide and I had to meet the vampire equivalent of judge, jury, and executioner. Yes—oh, yes, I’m fine. Tell him to call—? Oh, he’s there? Yes, I can wait . . . um, hello? Jake? . . . Jake, is that—oh, hey. Yeah, yeah, I’m at home. You hungry?”

-

Edward doesn’t _say_ anything about her hanging out with Jacob, but she knows he doesn’t approve. She can tell from the long stares, prolonged silences, and spontaneous dates that Edward is silently griping over the fact that she refuses to drop Jacob. It had come to a head in the first week, not their _first_ fight, but a fight just the same, in the school parking lot.

Her boyfriend is leaning against his car. “Jake’s picking me up. We’re gonna meet the guys and get pizza.”

Edward gave her a long look and sighs, his beautiful face turned into a stone image of _pain_ and _agony_ and—

“Just be careful, Bella. They can hurt you. Really hurt you.”

Bella feels her blood close to boiling. “Well, _you_ hurt _me,_ but Jacob at least has the manners to only bring that up when I tell him you’re being a dick.”

Second beat between them, and then, “W-what?”

“I said: you’re being a _dick._ ” She enunciates a bit louder, luring a few unwanted gazes. Bella can feel the heat in her chest, the _hole_ beginning to tear and burn. She can hear the motorcycle before she sees them, Jake idling against the curb, head tilted curiously. “Look, I am hanging out with Jacob. He’s not going to _hurt_ me? Okay?”

“He can’t help it. He’s an animal.”

“You—you know what? I don’t want to talk to you right now. _You’re_ the only one that’s hurting me, Edward Cullen.”

-

With Carlisle and Esme working on the house, Edward griping, and Alice moody, it makes going to the Cullen house a less than fun affair. She is almost ecstatic when Rosalie and Emmett return even if it means for more awkward exchanges.

 “So, you slept with Demetri.” Rosalie says once they’re behind the wheel of her Rolls Royce Wraith. It’s an insanely old car, built like a tank, and on the way to a car show in Port Angeles it is perfect to stretch across the backseat and think.

Alice looks witheringly from the front seat. “Are you going to lecture me too?”

“No,” Rosalie says, her brow and voice incredibly smooth. The open window of the Wraith sending tendrils of her long hair flying. “Because that’s what Demetri _wants._ He wants you to feel isolated. He wants you to feel like you have no where to go, and no one but him. I’m not leaving you.”

Alice reaches across the console and Rosalie locks their fingers together.

Bella watches the moment with a guilt seeping in her chest. She just feels so _disillusioned_ from the faerietale that Edward—no, that _she_ made for herself. She doesn’t know how to move on once her view on the world—Edward’s world—has been shattered.

Alice looks back at her, frowning. Bella sinks back against the car seat.

Rosalie continues, eyes snapping to Bella’s in the car mirror. “So, we need a plan of _attack._ ”


	3. Chapter 3

They do, in fact, need an attack plan because a newborn army is causing trouble in the Seattle area. They need Jasper.

He answers the first ring when Alice calls.

When he returns his clothes are worn as if from wear and travel, his hair is long and tangled against his nape, and his eyes are deep umber. Bella is a little more less enchanted when she sees the way Jasper looks at his wife, careful, fearful. As if she might disappear in a cloud of smoke and leave him behind.

He is a husk of a man, dead on his feet and in love with a woman who loved another.

-

"How do you know so much about newborns?" Bella asks.

Jasper looks a little bashful and his gaze darts across the field to where Alice is sparring with Edward; the two of them lightening fast sparks across the circle. Alice predicting every move Edward will make. Edward listening every move Alice will make.

She would have thought it may render them motionless like when they played chess, but the two, it seemed, had some baggage to work out. In front of the wolves no less. Needless to say, Jake and Paul were enjoying the little show.

"It's a long story." Jasper tusks, his Texan accent thicker in his voice.

"Tell me," Bella presses and so, he does. He tells her about his human memories, his days as an officer in the South—"Believe me it was better to be dead than a deserter." "I think the yankees would say differently." "Yeah, I see that now."—and how he met Maria, the vampire who turned him. This seems to cause the shift in Jasper's mannerisms. His body turns tight. His bearing drawn as he describes the beautiful woman who wished promises and professes of love into his ear like poison. "Thought she was the one."

There are other things too, meeting Peter and Charlotte, his friends and comrades, getting away from Maria and beginning his life as a vampire for real—alone, confused, and angry.

Jasper could influence the emotions of a person, but he could also be persuaded by the ones around him. So, on Christmas Eve, in a family diner filled with excited children, parents, and friends, Jasper was grasping a cup of coffee, soaking in happiness, love, and familial affection; when someone stepped close, close enough to whisper in his ear, "I've been waiting for you."

Jasper says he sat there, dumbstruck and confused as this angel, this saving grace, peered over him with wide goldenrod eyes and a fluffy fur coat. "I'm sorry to keep you waiting, ma'm." He said in return.

A distance way, the fight between Edward and Alice is called to truce and the two walk away.

Alice's gaze settles on Jasper.

-

When Bella goes home, she catches sight of Jasper and Alice in the clearing where they fought. Jasper takes Alice's hand in his and presses a kiss to her palm. Alice doesn't move for a moment, but then she is gone, darting like a fairy through the trees.

-

"So," Jessica drawls during AP English. It's a free reading period, but Jessica does not look interested in her biography of Katherine Hepburn and Bella was slowly losing interest in her battered copy of  _Wuthering Heights_. She perks at the sound of a voice, nervously glancing over at Jessica who is picking her nails and trying to look exceptionally nonchalant. "What are you doing after graduation?"

That one sentence has been floating around her mind since her college catalogs started to arrive. She had turned in a bulk of them during the high times with Jake last year, writing exceptionally worded essays and with brimming letters of recommendation. She had been elated to do it.

Now, she sits in the living room, going over catalogs with Charlie, worrying her lip near bloody as the anxiety builds inside her. She hasn't really thought about her future since she had been with Edward. Well, not a future that didn't involve diamond-encrusted skin and impervious to most disasters, but there had been a time, not too long ago, where she had pondered over something else.

"I think I might go into teaching, but I dunno." She says, finally. Probably putting too much thought into Jessica's question for question's sake.

"Yeah?" Jessica looks up, her eyes alight with some flare of interest. "What grade do you think?"

"I dunno."

"Well, I think I'll become a professor because there is no way I am teaching anyone who doesn't really want to be here. Like, I have a four-point-oh. I don't have the  _time._ " Jessica digs into her pencil case for a nail file, then proceeds to shape her nails while chatting her up about the colleges in the area that specialize in teaching, grad assistantships, and her cousin's friend who is subletting an apartment. "But, you're probably gonna got an apartment with Cullen, right?"

That makes Bella pause.

She has always been so confidant in her school work, it was the one sure thing about herself that got her any recognition. Her sparkling grades that flashed her brain and a deeper understanding of the material she absorbed like a sponge.

Now, college would just be a thing she did with Edward. Attached to him.

She turns back to her book.

"Hey," Jessica says and pulls out a bottle of dark maroon polish. "Let me do your nails and you can tell me about that book? I think the main character and that Heathcliff dude are half-siblings."

"Heathcliff and . . . Cathy?" Jessica nods.

She lets Jessica paint her nails and listens to her insane theory about the former Lord Earnshaw and his affairs with other women before the beginning of the book, vague textual evidence, and how Jessica had written a whole paper about it and pissed off their school's meager English department.

 

-

"Did you go to college?" She asks when Emily finishes pulling a tray of macaroons out of the oven. The homey little kitchen smells like coconut and burnt sugar, a welcoming mix against the unexpected cold snap in late March. Then again, this was Forks.

It occurs to Bella that she should be more concerned about more important things—Victoria, for instants—and if she will even live to  _walk_ at graduation, let alone make it to a college dorm. Currently, Jake and Jared are passed out on the couch, snoring like bovines after being up all night patrolling the area around her house. Jasper and Emmett are scheduled to pick her up at the border in two hours.

Emily kicks the back of the oven door, attempting to shut it. It creaks and fall back on her heel, making her almost drop the pan. "Ouch! Shoot."

"I'll get it." Bella leans down to shut the oven and barely dodges Emily's pan.

"What were you asking?"

"Did you go to college?"

"Oh, yeah, I went to culinary school with a business minor." Emily gestures around the kitchen which is littered with the fruits of her labor. "I'm cooking for wolves now, but soon I will have my diner and I am making all of you help me run it as payment for eating me out of house and home."

Bella regales in the idea, a cute little diner where Emily's herb-filled burgers and avocado dip are the norm. Heaven. Even the creamer she makes for the coffee would be heavenly.

"Did you like it?"

"Did I like what?"

Bella sighs, "College."

Emily flashes her a smile, the scar of her upper lip tugging against her skin. It's oddly charming. The more you see of Emily's face, the less you see the scar. "I'm just messing with ya, relax." Emily grabs two mugs from the cabinet and then her French press Bella prepared on the counter. "Sit. We'll talk."

Bella, determined to annoy Emily now more than ever, sits on the counter, nudging aside another pan of macaroons and six Tupperware containers of cookies for the La Push daycare center which Emily volunteers at three times a week.

Bella noticed early on that a lot of Emily's kitchen is charity work, giving back to the community that raised her. Emily has two bake sales to prepare for, one for the library and one for scholarships, a color-coded organization for the food drive, and an abundance of community projects filling up her calendar. Date nights with Sam are circled in red ink on the wall like bright target points.

On top of all that, Emily supplies baked good for the diner in Forks and waitresses there four times a week. Sometimes doubles. Sometimes weekends.

At first, Bella wonders how Emily can stand not to be near her imprint every second of every day, but she feels that the more time that she spends with Edward, that she gets it. Although, Emily and Sam hardly look like a couple who want space when they're together.

The moments they are together seem . . . lasting.

"Okay, kid, I'm all ears and answers," Emily presents her with a bright yellow mug, foaming and frothy at the top from Emily's culinary magic. Bella watches her pull a stool around from the kitchen island and ease into it, the creaking legs threatening to give, but not today.

"Did you . . . have fun in college?"

"Well, yeah. It was my first time away from my family and my sisters, I missed them like crazy, but it gave me a chance to be me for a while. I got to know myself better, what I liked, what I didn't like, who I wanted to be. I had a girlfriend for a while and she helped me get my own place and declare my major."

Bella blinks, she wonders if that's too much information.

Emily smiles, knowingly. "Her name was Liz. We thought we were going to get married and open up this itty-bitty bakery. It was disgustingly cute. We were disgustingly cute."

"What happened?"

"Well, life just pulled us in different directions. It does that some times. Trust me, I was completely torn up when this was happening, its just—well, it's not as painful now. I like my life now. Hell, I love my life now. I love my fiancé. I love my family. I love this pack. I love having these girl talks with you," Emily gestures between them. "I'm the youngest of three so Leah was always kinda my little sister, but she hasn't wanted to talk to me much since, well, you know."

"Yeah," Bella curls her fingers around the mug. "I like talk to you too."

Emily smiles again, that genuine, impossibly pretty smile that makes hearts rattle and shatter before piecing them together again.

"Were you scared of going to college?"

"Yeah, I was scared of going and scared of leaving. My problem was that life moves on and at the time I had found my safety niche. When I graduated, I tried to stay in that college town and fit myself back into it, but I would never fit the same way again. Life moves on. People do change and I changed too much to be a part of it anymore."

-

"You know what else I realized?" Emily asks.

Bella scratches her nose, blotting her sleeve against her undereye. "What?"

"I made six batches of coconut macaroons and I think I might be allergic to coconut."

-

That night, Edward asks her to marry him.

Bella says no.

* * *

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm sorry, did you not click on this clearly marked Alice/Demetri fic for some quality in-depth character arc about Bella liberating herself from Edward? Emily and Jessica having actual character moments? no? i'm sorry. i'm in crisis. i will be adding demetri to the main cast again (just not as quickly as i did jasper).
> 
> also, i love driving home the point that you can be a bi person in a relationship with the same sex and then date/marry the opposite. you're valid as fuck bitch.
> 
> i'm just working through some things so the college convos and the macaroons thing did happen. i also used to sign my friend up for bake sales bc i am That High Maintenance Bitch who knew she could sell lemon squares for three dollars and get the library the new books they needed. it worked didn't it? (it did, there's a plaque in the local library) anyways, i will get serious soon. hopefully. review and i might ;)
> 
> \- cafeanna


	4. Chapter 4

Edward has taken to walking her to her door when he drops her off after dates or school. Probably more of a protective gesture than romantic one, but Bella leans into his touch, swaying with his voice as he carries on the tune of the last song they heard on the radio. Even though it's mid-afternoon on a Wednesday, it still feels like they're floating through a park on a velvety evening.

He has a beautiful voice.

They're standing under her porch light, Edward's fingers in her hair, and he's smiling because Charlie is going on an internal monologue about Bella not using her truck as much these days and—hadn't she just come from Jacob's?

"I'll say we were all hanging out." Bella says smoothly, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.

Her heart is clenching and restricting and twisting when he leans in and presses a kiss to the crown of her head, his nose touches her hair. "You smell like sugar," he murmurs, and she shivers, his cool breath traveling the synapses and byways of her down her spine. "Sugar and flour, chocolate and vanilla." He leans back appraising her. "I have to thank that baker."

"I like Emily's brownies." She mumbles, heart still wrenching for a kiss when he smiles, bright and dazzling, and just as he's leaning in again to give her what she wants—

Charlie opens the door.

She's early for curfew.

Again.

Yay.

* * *

"So,  _kid,_ " Charlie says when Alice bounds up the stairs to grab her bags. "I'm going to let you spend the night at the Cullen house, but if I see hide or hair of your boyfriend, I'm going to very disappointed in you. And I will ground you again."

Bella summons an apologetic smile. "I promise, dad. Edward and Carlisle are going camping. It's just going to be me, Esme, and Alice having a girl's night." And Rosalie, but no one in town has seen her and Emmett yet, so Bella doesn't deign to mention.

Charlie nods once, and takes a sip of his decafe. "I think it's good what you're doing." Bella stares at him, brow lifting. Charlie lowers his voice and mouths, "How's Alice?"

She stares at Charlie for a confused moment before it clicks.

_Oh._ Bella can feel the nervous prickle of embarrassment and guilt clawing up the back of her neck. The official story around town is Alice needing time off of school for mental health reasons. Noble reasons, but still ones that have led to quite a bit of confusion and rumor around town. And although Alice has been putting on a brilliant front, it seems as though it is not brilliant enough.

In truth, it's been hard. Trying to be a good friend to Alice or trying to be a good girlfriend to Edward.

After Italy, the reveal, and the fallout, their relationship has been on rocky grounds.

Alice regulated to Bella-pick-ups and appearances with Charlie, but never more than the fifteen-minute drive from one house to another to fill in the gaps sinking between them.

She remembers, suddenly and with teeth, how Alice had once told her that she saw that they would be great friends.

She wonders how to answer.

"She's doing her best." Bella says softly and Charlie nods again.

* * *

It is all, of course, a logical ruse.

When she arrives, the Cullen clan are still bustling around the house, waiting for nightfall to take off on a hunting trip. The slowly darkening of their irises accompanied by the bruised shadows under their eyes.

Alice disappears the moment they clear the threshold, murmuring something about a fort before she is nothing but a vague memory in the air.

The sharp clack of heels alerts her to another Cullen. Esme? Rosalie? Emmett?

"Hello Bella!" Esme greets her pulls her into a hug. "I went to the grocery store today," she announces, leading Bella in through the newly renovated kitchen. "And I picked up the funniest thing."

One of the skylights above them is tinged a bit darker than the others, breaking the harmony of the open concept kitchen. "What happened there?"

"Oh, Edward was trying to make brownies." Esme says and she looks a little embarrassed by it. Bella keeps staring at the darker glass panel, hoping her genuinely confused expression conveys the question she wants to ask. Esme presses her lips together. "Emmett . . . tried to help."

"Well, that makes sense."

"My mother used a wooden spoon, not that whisk everyone thinks is so chic!" Emmett's voice booms down from the floors above. Open concept, open airways. Also, vampire hearing. Bella could only imagine what it would be like to live here for real.

No privacy.

"But, anyway, I wanted to show you these." Esme crosses the floor to a sleek white cabinet and folds it open. Bella catches sight of the food storage the Cullen's have been building up, and winces. A lot of food to go to waste.

She leans against the grand marble island, complete with a sink and a glass pedestal filled with burnt brownies, the condensation sticking to the edge of the glass.  _Edward tried to make me brownies._ She thinks, tapping her finger against counter.

Gingerly, as Bella is with all things in this house, she lifts the lid and sets it aside. The brownies are moist, but not appetizingly so, they are left under a glass lid damp with just enough edge of burnt underneath.

Despite the effort, she really wishes he had just bought Emily's brownies.

Unsure of what to do with the edge, Bella chews, swallows, and sets the other piece of the brownie back. Carefully resetting the lid.

"What do you do with all the uneaten food?"

"Oh, we donate the canned and boxed things. For the perishables, we try to make compost for Rosalie's garden. It's been easier in recent years because I can claim we don't buy sugary things because we're health nuts." Esme's answer is instant, as she kneels, sensible heels shifting across the tile as she tries to find whatever it is that she wants to show her. "Emmett put these away."

Bella shifts. "Do you think—I mean, if it's not too much," She pauses and Esme's inquisitive dark eyes peer over the counter. "The pack is really growing lately because of Victoria and they're having trouble feeding all of them. Do you think we could maybe give some food to them?"

Esme smiles, a beautiful genuine thing. "Of course, honey. I think that's a great idea."

Bella feels a brief tinge of joy as the praise when Esme tosses a bag of chips onto the counter.

"Found it!" Esme picks up the bag again and turns the label to face her. "These are new, so I'm not very used to the scent yet, but I saw them in the store and I thought 'oh that's so  _funny_ '."

Bella stares.

It's a package of  _Slap Yo Mama_ chips.

Esme is beaming.

"Oh, I  _love_ those."

* * *

Twenty minutes later, Bella sits with her hands tucked between her knees on Edward's bed. She is still not convinced that she washed out all the spicy goodness from the jalapeño chips and she is suddenly very hungry for some good fajitas. All the food her and her mom gorged on for girl's nights in Arizona.

In fact, part of her wishes she is actually having a girl's night.

Not—

Well, not whatever this is.

She bounces herself slightly, feeling the spring of the mattress under her. "New bed?" Edward casts a glance behind him, smile evident. The iron-wrought monstrosity takes up much more of Edward's once "spacious" bedroom then Bella thought possible. She suddenly feels very guilty.

_He bought a bed so I don't have to sleep on the couch. He tried to make brownies because I said I liked them._

Her stomach clenches. "You didn't have to."

"Oh, Bella, I wanted to."

Which is just—

It's  _fine._

Edward wants to buy a bed? He'll buy a bed. Edward wants to make brownies? He'll do it.

"Do you think we can go to the beach on Sunday? I know, you're not supposed to, but I was going to talk to Jake and ask if it would be okay." She slots her fingers together between her knees. Her breath smells like jalapeños. The spiciness masking the sweet burnt scent of the chocolate.

"I'll think about it." Edward says, sliding another stack of CDs into place on the shelf that made up one of the walls. "I let Emmett help me put these away and he forgot the system I laid out."

Bella thinks she can hear a thump through the house, as if Emmett needs to let them know he hears what's going on and wasn't scared to break through Esme's open floor plan to do it.

"But you will think about it?"

"Yes, of course." Edward says, but his back is still to her.

Bella sighs.

That means no.

Oh well.

She sits, leaning into a sea of composed music that Edward has laid across the bed. Some are classics like Mozart, Shubert, and Tarkovsky, but there is some newer generations mixed in. She taps on a Nirvana album, smiling to herself. "My mom loves 'Heart Shaped Box'." She says, smiling. "She hate, hate,  _hates_ Courtney Love, but she loves this song."

"That one was a gift." Edward says, glancing at the CD case in her hand.

"Oh, who?"

"Hmm,"

That means Alice.

Bella sets the CD down and begins stacking the cases, in alphabetical order, one by one, the sharp clanks almost music to her ears. She stacks them up again and sets them down on the end table by the bed when a little velvet box catches her attention.

It's velvet. Black velvet, Tiffany blue ribbon, tight closed box that would give a satisfying snap when shut.

It's—

It's not  _gaudy._

But it's the kind of thing that's there for  _presentation._

Bella suddenly feels light-headed and robotically sets the CDs back down onto the bed, letting them scatter where they fell, and shifting further and further up. Edward continues shelving his CDs with unbroken efficiency.

Her stomach twists so hard it cramps.

"I think I wanna go home," she says quietly, but she knows Edward can hear her. He can hear the panic under her voice, feel the shift in the air, and scent her anxiety that beads against her neck. "I'm really not feeling well."

Edward looks at her, his eyes full of laughter. "Wouldn't you be better off in a place where no one else can get sick?"

"I don't think Rosalie would like it if I vomited in her bathroom." She says, her hands turning clammy at the palms. She wants to press them between her knees again, but before she can do anything, she's crossing Edward's bedroom and into the adjacent bathroom. Edward is at her heels. "Give me some space."

* * *

_Okay, okay, oh-kay._ Bella taps her nails along the edge of the sink, stomach still in knots. Alice has been cryptically hinting at something like this, talking about jewelry and asking Bella questions about dresses and flowers. "Oh boy," she mutters and quickly presses her lips together.

She is the only human in the house. She is the only one without superpowers.

She needs to stay  _calm._

Edward raps at the door and the handle turns half an inch before Bella catches it, but it's useless, the door is opening and there is her boyfriend—

Edward's face is pinched in concern. "Are you alright?"

"Yeah, but could you just—you know, not stand outside the bathroom? It's a little embarrassing."

"I want to be here if you need me."

"I need to pee and I can't if you're standing out here. Could you please?"

Edward slips back into his room and shutting the door behind him with nary a sound. Bella goes back into the bathroom, slashes water on her face, towels her neck off, and slips back out again and down the hallway.

* * *

The only door open door other than the bathrooms is a lone bedroom down the hall. Bella doesn't have to look to know it's Alice and Jasper's room, but she does anyway. She finds herself caught on the threshold, looking in.

She can see Alice's makeup table, the edge of the bed where the sheets have been torn off, and a closet that looks like it's been gutted, but—

It feels wrong. It feels  _empty_.

It feels like a graveyard.

It feels like a bastardization of everything Bella has built up in her mind. The marriage bed, the marriage bond, broken for a mate bond. The clothes, the shoes, the makeup, all these things her mother and father had, that Alice and Jasper had, torn to pieces, left abandoned in boxes, and Emily's voice in her head saying:  _you found your niche, but you can't go back. Things change, people change, you're changing._

She turns back down the hall, down the stairs, and goes to sit in the kitchen, staring at the window and the brownies and the empty chip bag in the empty garbage can, trying to remember a time when this pleased her.

* * *

Edward is standing at the top of the stairs when she circles back. "Where've you been?" She forces a smile, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. "C'mon, I want to show you something." His hand locks around hers, cool fingers threading through her own. Normally Bella would have delighted in the change of temperature, the feeling of his cold perfect hands in her own, but now—

"Edward."

"Hm?"

"Everyone's . . . downstairs."

He leads her past the landing to his room, not checking his stride. "No, everyone's gone out." Bella peers over the railing down into the living room that has been left barren and untouched as an open house. "They're going on a hunt."

She hears a door shut, softly, somewhere in the house.

* * *

What follows then is an awkward twenty-minute argument between the two of them about marriage and commitment and rings and family. Bella feels like she's putting up a good front, dragging out her parents' marriage and all its petty inconsistencies. Then Edward counters with the less likely rate of divorce among vampires when—when—

Bella sucks in a quick breath. "Well, that feels like too much commit—" She tries to stop the words coming out of her mouth, but once they eek, she knows a line somewhere has been drawn. She can see it in Edward's face.

"Too much commitment?" He repeats, the glass edge of his voice seems to cut against her, holding her insecurities to the blade. "It's too much commitment to marry me, but you would become a damned creature like me for all eternity?"

And that's—

That's the  _thing._

It's because it's what Edward wants. What Edward wants, Edward gets. He'll buy it, sell it, make it, or manifest it as it pleases him. But for her? It's conditional. A bed for her to sleep on. A kiss on the forehead instead of mouth. A plate of brownies he made. A future he maps out.

What Edward thinks is best is what Edward wants.

"It's not what I want."

"We have to do some give and take, Bella. That's what partnership  _is_." Edward says smoothly. Cool, like an adult explaining something to a petulant child. Like he is above screaming and yelling, but not the cool darkness that slides over him. "Look Bella, I'm not saying we won't have our fights. We're having one now, but we can work through them and—"

"It's not what I  _want._ " Bella says, tears building heavy and salty on the back of her tongue. "I don't—I don't  _want_ any of this."

The annoyance in Edward's face flickers for a moment to concern. "Bella. . ."

"I just, I don't want any of this." She repeats, a web of ugly, salty thing building up inside of her, dressing the walls and burning her throat. "I just, I just don't want anything."

Edward pulls her into a too tight hug that crushes her jaw against his collarbone, his forearms into her shoulder blades, his chin into her shoulder.

They just don't fit together anymore.

* * *

Bella watches the rain pour down and pulls out her phone.

**You (11:30 pm):** hey alice?

**Alice (11: 30 pm):** hi bella what's going on?

**You (11:32 pm):** did you see that?

**Alice (11:33 pm):** yeah

**You (11:40 pm):** is there anyway we can have a real sleepover at my house, right now?

* * *

Bella wakes up to the smell of eggs burning in the kitchen. She blinks up over the back of the couch into the kitchen to find Alice sitting at the table, doodling in a journal while Charlie scrapped at a frying pan. She cringes.  _I'm going to have to clean that later._

"G'morning Bella!" Alice chirps and bounds over, slinging herself across the back of the couch and landing in a graceful pile on one of the cushions. "Okay, so we finished the first season of  _Twin Peaks_ last night, but I think we should start on two and keep the party going."

Bella yawns, remembering last night, filling up a basket of snacks from the Cullen preserves before driving back to her house, making a camp on the couch and just watching a TV show with Alice. The most normal thing in the world.

She looks over to see Charlie plating eggs in the kitchen. "Dad, is it okay if Alice stays over?"

"Sure. Hey, Bells, give me a hand with these, hm?"

Bella kicks off her afghan and Alice kneels down in front of the TV, setting up the next episode. Charlie is plating the eggs and toast he made, which smell burnt, but then he hands her two plates. "One for you and one for Alice."

"Oh, dad thanks."

"Eh, don't worry about it." Charlie's gaze flickers into the living room where Alice is sitting, turning up the volume on the television. "So, what happened last night?"

Bella pauses a moment, feeling herself beginning to shrink. "Oh, uh, Edward and Carlisle came home because of the rain, so . . . I asked Alice if it would be alright if we had our girl's night here."

Charlie stares at her a second, as if accessing her answer.

"I'm proud of you, Bells." He drops a kiss onto her forehead and circles around her, pulling on his sheriff's hat. "I don't want to hear any spoilers Alice. I'm going to watch this show all on my own."

"You got it Charlie." Alice calls as Charlie ducks through the door. Alice turns over her shoulder to look at her. "So, do you want to talk about last night?"

Bella stands there—pajama pants, messy hair, and two plates of eggs—and shakes her head. "I would much rather hear your theories on who shot Detective Cooper." She swings around the couch again, setting one plate on the coffee table and then easing back. She pulls the blanket over her and nestles in.

She really just needs a girl's night.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello! how's it going?
> 
> But really, do you think Bella and Esme ever had any of those awkward mom-girlfriend talks? I remember prattling on with this Guy I Was Seeing's step-mother and just awkwardly talking about male strippers. In my defense, it was a weird fuckin' family.
> 
> Also, I happen to love, love, love me some Courtney Love, so this is just a character thing. And "Heart-Shaped Box" is a song near and dear because it was my first Nirvana song and a pleasant memory of my childhood. It also happens to be about Courtney Love's vagina. So, have fun with that knowledge, I guess.
> 
> I really needed Bella and Edward to argue (bc this is becoming a THEM fic) but I promise Demetri is coming.


	5. Chapter 5

Somewhere between being named salutatorian and finishing the entirety of  _Twin Peaks,_ the gravity of her conversation with Edward settles in the pit of her stomach. It drops somewhere, like a seed of discord loose from her throat into a gaping, ragged hole in her chest. It's an old wound that splits open and bleeds as if it has never healed.

Unanswered calls begin to rack up and the taps on her window go unanswered, but Bella invites Alice and Rosalie over for movie days. She visits the pack for lunch and bonfires. She goes to study sessions and proofreads papers for her friends.

She tries, tries, tries not to think about it, but Edward is everywhere. A clear juxtaposition from when he used to be nowhere, he is suddenly everywhere, all at once, too often.

He is sitting on her porch when she comes home, looking forlorn and apologetic, but for what Bella is not quite sure. She itches to reach out, touch and comfort as much as he would allow, but then he starts  _talking—_

"I think we can work this out—"

"Work out what?"

"— _this,_ this fight."

"We're fighting?"

Edward blinks, slowly, brows bunching. "Yes? Yes, Bella we're fighting."

"We're not fighting," she says, gaze flickering down to his impeccable Borgue boots, neatly laced and stained to match his coat. Or, miraculously matched. Either or.

She puzzles on the nick on his left boot, just at the toe, as if he had kicked something.

"We're not fighting." He repeats and his eyes narrow. "Then what are we?"

"We're . . . not together." She says, a touch harder than she means, a touch harsher than she wants. She watches the hurt bloom in Edward's goldenrod eyes. His perfect features all working together in symbiosis to create the perfect picture of grief. "Not right now." She adds quickly, too quickly and she wants to kick herself. "I just need some space, okay?"

His jaw works as if the mechanics of the words were easier than the ones that rolled out so easily for her. "Okay," he says and Bella can feel the stab of  _pain-guilt-loneliness_  in his voice. "I'll see you later then."

He leaves her there, on her porch, where he should have a year ago.

* * *

Alice still throws her a big, ostentatious graduation party because Alice is Alice, and its cathartic.

Bella stands by with sagely nods as Alice orders food, decorations, and a goodie bags. She helps Alice and Rosalie wind pink lights around the stair railing, the patio, and the driveway. She meticulously arranges the snack table on the kitchen island—a punch bowl, a large shimmering decanter that Bella tries to veto, Rosalie vetoes, and Alice throws a two-minute hissy fit to keep.

Rosalie drags a cooler the size of a coffin out onto the back patio and fills it with several bags of ice and twelve cartons of soda, lemonade, and sparkling water.

When the food arrives, Bella smiles gently at the one hundred cream cheese frosted cupcakes topped with star-shaped sprinkles. Emily's loving touch on each.

Esme tips generously.

While Alice and Rosalie handle the driveway-dangling-fairy light-vision, Bella is left to sit in the living room, shuffling through stacks and stacks of CDs for the party's music. Bella is at first, hesitant of her choices, but Alice merely smiles, several yards of lights under her arm and a handful of spikes. "Nonsense! Everyone likes your music tastes!"

She says it so casually, Bella almost forgets that Alice can see the future and it's not just a vote of confidence, but hard cold fact. She can't quite tell what makes her feel better.

She scourges up a decent stack of music, some pop, some soft rock, mostly indie. She's really digging indie scene these past couple weeks.

When guests start arriving and the valedictorian comes sailing through the door, Bella is at once informed that the music is  _poppin'_ which makes her smile. The two of them stand in compatible silence as they take in the Cullen's decorated living room, noting the pink lights, pink table accents, and pink cupcakes.

Then, totally kidding and smiling cheekily, Jessica asks, "So, is it a girl?"

"Ah, g—what?" Bella sputters, choking on her drink and nearly spilling the sugar-free lemonade down her borrowed blouse. Rosalie's eyes find hers in the crowd, that hawk-like gold stare shooting straight through her. "What—no, we broke up."

So, that gets around town.

* * *

"I don't want to talk about it." Bella says, squeezing a bit too hard on the nutcracker Emily has given her. The walnut in her hand cracks, but the rind splits, flies, and spins in a circle around the bowl before shooting off again with the force of its momentum to disappear into the shoe mat.

Emily doesn't look up from her dough kneading, digging her knuckles deeper and deeper in.

Jake makes a noise in the back of his throat, like a dog trying to get attention. "I don't want to talk."

"Bells—"

A loud buzzer rings from down the hall and Paul, shooting up so fast he almost knocks back his chair in the process, rising to get the laundry out of the dryer. "Thank God." He mutters as he disappears down into the basement, sending a final salute to Emily.

Bella frowns, brows drawing together.

She had wanted an escape. Come to Emily's. Make some walnut pound cake. Go the hell home. Worry about which college to choose and the newborn army on the border. Easy.

Not: Charlie tells Billy who tells Jake who tells everyone that her and Edward are on the rocks, so her last safe space in the state of Washington can infected with curiosity, questions, and apathy.

Emily has been doing a stellar job not bothering her. Paul has been doing even better. Jake, however, Jake has been—

"Bells," Jake whispers as if saying it lower might distract the annoyance and anger floating around in her head. "I'm not asking as a wolf. I'm asking as a friend—"

Bella clicks her tongue, gathering the cracked shells into a pile. "Oh, you can separate the two now?"

One thing she loves about Jake, he takes her sass in stride. Like a good friend. Jake's expression twists up and if Bella thought less of him, she thought he might have stamped his foot. "That's not  _fair_ —"

"And you know why I'm not telling you." Bella says firmly and cracks another nut for emphasis. Jake does not seem to get the implied threat. She cracks another. Jake whines.

"Hey Jake," Emily's smiling face leans over the kitchen island to catch his attention. "Go help Paul with the towels. I don't trust him to fold them correctly."

Jake offers his most defeated expression and then rises. "Okay." His haltingly makes his way down the stairs to the basement and Bella slowly, gently, sets the nutcracker down and puts her face in her hands.

She shouldn't have told Charlie anything.

A chair scraping across the floor catches her attention and she peaks out of her fingers at Emily. The warm, swirly feeling of tears coiling in her throat.

Emily fists a towel, patting her wrists and elbows. Her smile is a touch softer. It's all in the eyes, dark and warm like honey in coffee. "What's on your mind, kid?"

Bella frowns. "I appreciate it Emily, but I really,  _really_ don't want to talk about it."

Emily nods sagely and then leans back in her chair to yell down into the basement. "Hey, Paul? Could you start up the next load for me? It's the blue—"

"I got it!" He calls up and then the loud rumble of the washer and dryer start up downstairs. The door at the bottom of the stair's snaps shut.

Emily leans forward. "Okay, we should be good now."

"Does that work?"

"Trust me, I made the boys test it earlier." Emily's lips curl. "I told them, 'honey, there are somethings you don't want to hear, so when I ask you to hang out in the laundry room, I need to be sure you can't hear it'." She leans forward, chin on her palm. "So, what's on your mind?"

"Well in case you missed the newsflash, Edward and I—"

"Yeah, I gleaned that much from Jake's whining. What's going on?"

Bella fiddles with the broken pieces of walnuts in the table beside her, frowning. "It's just been a hard couple of days. I don't—well, I don't have many people I can really talk to, you know? Someone who knows everything and is not on sides. I think it's just been hard to really talk about without having to edit the story a bit."

"Okay, yeah, I get that. But aren't you friends with Edward's—sisters?"

Bella smiles. "Yeah, Alice, the shorter one." Then she frowns. "I haven't been a very good friend to her lately. At least, I don't feel like I have. She can see the future and she has always said we would be good friends, but I just don't . . . I can't get myself to be that sometimes, you know?"

"Well, friendships and relationships are similar in that way. They're both work."

"But I don't know, for a while Edward and I felt so easy and now," Bella chews on the inside of her cheek. "It feels like every conversation is like being dragged through gravel. I don't think I ever really forgave him for, for leaving me."

Emily considers the pile of walnut shells between her fingers, the empty coffee mug by her wrist, and the crescent shaped scar on otherwise unblemished expanse of her bare forearms.

She reaches out, tucking her fingers against Bella's.

"Relationships are about upkeep, first and foremost. Checking in on one another with the usual things: did you eat, have you slept, how are you feeling? But they are also about how those relationships make you feel. If they do nothing for you, then maybe it is good and healthy to let go."

Bella sits a moment, drinking this in.

Emily fixes her with a leveled stare. "How do you feel when you are around Edward?"

"Well, I used to—"

"Mhm, no. What do you feel when you are around him now?"

Bella hates how little time it takes for her to summon the answer. "Lonely."

"Do you feel like you gave it an honest try?"

"What do you mean?"

"Do you feel like you tried to work things out? Do you feel like you tried to fix things?"

"I guess. Maybe? No," Her teeth sink into her lip just enough to make it hurt, but not enough to make her meet Emily's stare. "I don't know. For a while I feel like I was saying something and he wasn't listening. Or, he was saying something and I couldn't get myself to listen. And he tells me he loves me whenever he sees me, and God—he looked so  _hurt_ at Alice's graduation party because everyone was thinking about it—"

"I think," Emily says, cutting into Bella's rant seamlessly. "That you know what this all means. You still love him? Sure, you do. It's written all over your face." Emily's fingers squeeze hers. "And that's  _okay._ It's okay to still love him and think about him, just don't let it consume you."

Bella sucks in a breath as a near physical blow hits her chest. She presses her lips together. "I feel like it's consuming me."

"He was your first love. He was very important. It's okay for it to hurt."

Bella licks her lips and is momentarily surprised to find them salty. She presses her nose against her shoulder and sniffs. "I just, I don't want to get bad again. Like last year, you know?"

"If you do, you have the tools to help yourself now. You have family and friends that care about you. You know that right?" Bella nods and Emily smiles a bit wider. "C'mere, kid."

Emily envelopes her in an embrace and, for a moment, the hole in her chest aches a little less.

* * *

It's Paul that drives her to the border when her time in La Push is up. He's silent, as usual, blaring music the entire way there loud enough to wake the dead. When she tells him this, he smiles and says, "Well, how else are we gonna let those blood-suckers know we're on the way?"

Bella tries not to roll her eyes too hard and stares out the window.

Before long, they arrive at the border where Alice is sitting on the hood of her Porsche, punctual as usual. However, Bella can make out Jasper in the passenger seat beyond the tinted glass, his expression drawn and distant.

Paul lets out a low whistle. "That's a nice car."

"Somethings wrong." Bella mutters, but before she can jump out, Paul already presses the lock down on the car door, stopping her short. "Hey!"

She tries the door again and Paul presses the lock button down right before she can tug on the handle.

Paul's eyes narrow and suddenly all the laughter from this afternoon is out of his face. He is, at once, Sam's second-in-command, protector of La Push and its people. "What do you mean 'somethings wrong'? Don't just say shit like that and jump out. Jeez, do you have a death wish?"

"I mean—I think Alice may be having a vision."

Paul glances out the front window again, eyes squinting against the gleam coming off Alice's Porsche. "She looks like she's high."

"Yeah, well," Bella unhooks her seat belt and manages to open the door before Paul can stop her.

She crosses over quickly, nodding to a passing car before making her way over to Alice. "Alice, what's going on?" She murmurs and Alice's eyes open.

For a long, terrifying moment, Alice is completely silent.

Bella looks at her, the impeccable eyeliner wings elongating her eyes and giving them a low, sultry look. A bitter smile pulls at her mouth.

"The Volturi are coming here." She says and Bella watches Paul and Jasper straighten up, their twin expressions of both determination and confusion drawing them in parallel. "The guards," she amends for Paul's sake and summons the smallest of smiles. "Jane, Alec, Felix, and . . . Demetri."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello! i am now a college graduate and my crisis is nearly complete
> 
> also, i am realizing i am not handling the issues i am causing (in the story) with the best finesse, but i am having a hard time, how we say, making myself care. i want Bella to change, i want her to be this new/better person, but as we all know (and as i have learned through hours of therapy) that we cannot change ourselves so drastically. so, it has to be messy and bloody and Demetri is fuckin' coming, what the ever-loving fuck am i doing?
> 
> so, at least, he will be in the next chapter, and i can finally tell the story i need to.
> 
> honestly, i am having fun writing this. like, really. i like fixing things i don't like. that's essentially my degree: ripping things apart and telling people why they don't work in the first place. like Bella and Edward's relationship. also, i need to handle the: i might have to be turned into a vampire without a mate thing now. and my god, do i have a PLAN
> 
> please review, they make me so happy
> 
> \- cafeanna


	6. Chapter 6

Jasper looks ashen as they drive back to the Cullen house. Bella sits in the back, almost between them as Alice calls ahead and Jasper drives on. There is a seedy calm about the drive, Jasper with his hand on twelve o'clock so his pale wrist bends upward, the silver of his wristband gleaming in the sparse sunlight.

There is, also, a breadth of negative space between them. A barrier so steep that it cannot be crossed.

Bella remembers a time when Jasper would reach across the console to hold Alice's hand, thumb smoothing over her knuckles, a calming wave of energy.

Now, the calm in the car feels cold, awkward. Alice calls Carlisle, Jasper drives, and Bella sits. There is no inflection, no in-between. Just cold, calm nothinginess like the hole in her chest.

Jasper's eyes flicker to hers in the mirror. It's a brief moment, a barely-there exchange that seems to hold, weighing in her gut and burning into the backs of her eyelids.

* * *

Bella doesn't realize she's counting down to D-Day until the time comes for her to tell Charlie she's sleeping over at the Cullen's house.

It's a strange thing. After so many odd affirmations and comments about her plans and what she  _will do_ not what she  _can do,_ only  _now_ does Charlie decide to look at her, over his coffee with skepticism.

She battles back her urge to fold, mainly because she  _can't_ and steadies her guard.

She fights back the urge to mention that Charlie will be on a fishing weekend anyway.

She sticks to her story. The one Alice told her to tell.

"Since Emmett's back in town, Carlisle is taking the boys out on another camping trip." She adds, stirring her tea soft and slow. Charlie is still staring at her as if he were trying to puzzle something together. The intensity of his gaze makes the heat on her neck climb, beading sweat against the back of her neck.

She takes a drink of tea. She adds more honey. She drinks again.

"It's supposed to be pretty cold out this weekend." Charlie comments and although it is a totally valid point, Bella is not about to muck up the Cullen's meticulous planning. "I doubt Carlisle will chance it." Which is another valid point and, if they had been human, Bella is sure that Carlisle would not be the kind of parent to get his children stuck in deplorable weather.

However, they are not.

"Dad," she sighs, like a teenager, a real one. She can suddenly feel eighteen years of parental annoyance weighing on her. "I just want to have some girl time. I kinda need it right now."

"You're always over there."

"It's been a hard time." She says, seamlessly.

"Then you can have a sleepover, but not in your ex-boyfriend's house. Bring the girl's here. You guys can slum it for the night." The direct mention of their house, makes her pause. It's like the  _stuck here_ comment all over again, but reversed, against her.

Its not a secret that the Cullens have money. Bella has done her math homework while Alice watches the stock market on her laptop, chatting idly about which markets will plummet or not, teaching her the basics of safe investing and acquiring enough wealth to clothe and house several people.

Well, less now, but the sentiment remains.

"Dad, I'm not hiding the house from anyone." She says, feeling a leaden weight sinking in her chest. "Alice is just always the one to ask me to hang out, so we just gravitate to their house. And I still like talking to Esme and Carlisle. They told me I'm always welcome."

"And how does Edward feel about you being in his house all the time?"

Okay, another valid point, but not necessary.

And completely out of left field too. Bella cannot remember a time Charlie ever went up to bat for Edward—except, maybe when he was defending the Cullen family against rumors in the beginning—and he did so without hesitation, without sarcasm. It strikes her dumb for a moment, brain turning to mush as she slides over the words.

How does Edward feel about her being at the house all the time?

Of course, her being there is a necessity. Most of the time. Sometimes Alice just wants to sit in her room and make boxes for local homeless shelters and read  _Vogue_ which Bella is more than willing to do so long as Alice tells her what book to read next and stories about the past decades.

Edward has never really factored into that equation.

"He's rarely ever there anyway." She says and hopes that doesn't reveal too much. She really has no idea where Edward spends his new found free time, but she does know that he leaves when she arrives and comes home when she's gone.

What would their breakup have been like if she had not been under threat from the newborns?

"Maybe you can spend this sleepover here." Charlie says as if to fill up the silence, making a final point. "Give the boy some space."

"Maybe," She finds herself saying, too preoccupied by her thoughts.

* * *

There is a heavy air hanging around the Cullen house when Bella stops by after work.

It seems the inclusion of the Volturi guards—specific ones—have made the already tense air unbearable. Esme even seems caught up in the mood of the house, staring off into space in the main living room, deep in thought. Bella watches her a moment, transfixed by the unmoving beauty of her, the warm and joyous woman she knew so deep in her thoughts that she forgot to move.

Rosalie appears from nowhere, her goldenrod eyes flashing in the brightness of the house. "Is Alice here?"

"Not yet," Rosalie's attention flickers to Esme a moment, but doesn't stick, as if this were normal. "Edward's gone too."

Bella deflates at this.

Her conversation with Charlie still fresh in her brain. She had wanted to ask.

"I'm going to teach you how to do an oil change." Is all Rosalie says before she turns on her heel to presumably disappear into the garage.

Bonding time with Rosalie: begin.

The temperature-controlled room is fitted with blue lights and a wall of tools, most of which look brand-new. Bella's gaze fixes on the Royce Rosalie has taken to driving around town, making all the boys and men drool for more reason than one.

"Emmett and I went vintage car shopping for our anniversary." Rosalie says by way of explanation. In truth, Bella never put much thought to where Rosalie and Emmett have been the last few months before the vision and everything changed. "I've always wanted one of these, but owning one can be a bit tricky. Only so few made, all paperwork pointing to little ole me. I decided to risk it."

Bella contemplates her words then, and is surprised by them. She never really thought about the things that the Cullens  _couldn't_ do, always so caught up in what they could. But, she supposes, the list is indeed very long. Like, no sunlight, no crowds, no afternoons outside, no tea, no food, no insanely rare cars.

Her mouth feels dry as she takes a seat on one of the spinning stools. "You could scramble the paperwork. Make it lost in history."

"That's the plan." Rosalie hums, but it's noncommittal. As a vampire, her hearing is impeccable, but her attention is elsewhere.

Rosalie rolls up the sleeves of her jumpsuit, an actual mechanic's jumpsuit, and turns her back on her. Her long, lovely hair spilling down her shoulders. "I suppose you've heard of the latest developments." It's not a question.

"Demetri." Bella says and it feels so odd to say his name.

Months after her time in Volterra and she has yet to breathe the name herself, as if saying it might summon him. Rosalie half-turns to her, mouth tucking into her cheek.

"Yes.  _Him._ "

She says it with just enough infamy that she thinks Rosalie might be relaying off some past experience, some deep-seated blood feud that existed between the two of them. She decides to chance it, "Do you know him?"

"Of him," Rosalie corrects and gives her back again. "He tried to guilt Alice out of getting married." Rosalie pops the hood of her forbidden, lovely car and begins to do an oil check. "The first one, at least. Alice sent letters to Aro for years after she left, but after her and Jasper married, she stopped."

"Did anything," Bella pinches her brows together. "Happen?"

Rosalie keeps her eyes trained on the engine. "He sent flowers to the house. Peach roses, funeral flowers." The corner of Rosalie's mouth quirks and then settles. "The house  _reeked_ with them. Alice wouldn't speak. I hated him instantly."

That seems not as extreme as Bella is expecting. Perhaps, grand, but not extreme.

Still, she tries to see it as Rosalie did. The house—lovely and in the fashion of the century—overfilled with peach roses, the kind that had a scent that permeated the air, filled up funeral homes and graves. Those roses, she had those roses before, when her grandmother died. A huge bouquet of them was handed to her when her grandma was lowered into the ground, each person taking a turn to toss a handful of dirt in.

Bella had thrown the whole bouquet—which she wasn't supposed to do—but mid-ceremony, she realized there was a tiny gray spider nesting in the petals, and she couldn't help it.

She images Alice, as she is, but younger, on the cusp of her new life full of dreams and visions of a brighter future, coming home each day to find peach roses on her doorstep.

Alice's eminent happiness coming in at the cost of her former mate's broken heart.

"Alice never really talked about him much." Rosalie continues, "Anyone will tell you the same. The people who probably know the most are either Alice, Jasper, or Edward—"

Bella bristles, suddenly defensive. "Well, I don't want to  _pry—_ "

"Then, why do you want to know?" Rosalie's eyes snap to hers. That beautiful, cold stare that could bring a grown man to his knees or split stone. "Why are you so hung up on it?"

"I want to understand," Bella offers and when Rosalie's mouth twists, she adds, "I want to be a better friend to Alice. I just don't want to take for granted everything your family has risked for me."

Rosalie doesn't say anything after that. Just finishes the oil change mechanically and moves on to the next car. After five minutes, she turns to her and says, "Go inside, I can't concentrate with you watching me."

"Rosalie—" Bella is not sure what she will say, or what she even  _wants_ to say, but Rosalie's furious expression stops her short.

"Go talk to Alice. She's home now. She has something for you."

Bella rises mechanically from the stool and drifts back to the door.

Bonding time with Rosalie: done.

* * *

Alice still has her Volturi cloak.

It is a floor-dusting charcoal color with an inner-coat of red silk with silver stitching on the sleeves and trim. Over a hundred years old, it is well-maintained by virtue of Alice's expert seamstress skills and a very special garment bag.

Bella feels tempted to run her fingers along the silver stitching, or touch one of the embossed brass-buttons, but resists the urge. Her mind is a thousand places at once. First of all being that she finally knows the location of Alice's secret club house.

It is a literal house. Not finished, but homey. A little cottage in the woods.

Second being, that this little cottage has a bed. A bed that Alice has her Volturi cloak laid over.

"You want  _me_ to wear this?"

Alice nods an affirmative. "It will keep you warm in the mountains. Warmer than Edward can keep you."

Bella raises her eyebrows in muse and turns her attention back to the diamonds—actual diamonds—that created a sort of tassel from throat to shoulder.

It's such a fine thing, such a fine, fine thing that Bella can scarcely imagine wearing it.

"I have been," Alice sinks into the bed beside it, adjusting the fold of a sleeve, her expression oddly terse for a moment, but it smooths into cool indifference. "I have been keeping it on me for a couple weeks. My scent is pretty well sunk into it."

Bella stares at her.

"Why do  _I_  need to wear it?"

That is the proper question.

"I lost sight of the guards earlier this afternoon. I had a thought that maybe when the fighting happens, that they would see the wolves. I know Jacob and Edward will be with you the night before, but when the fighting begins, I can't see anything." Alice does her best to sound nonplussed by this and says, "I think we need to derail the Volturi a little."

"Demetri."

"Yes, Demetri." Alice agrees, folding her hands over her lap. Her smile is wan. "If he catches my scent, he won't be able to resist." She says this with such authority that Bella believes it. It is a simple and single truth because Alice says so.

"And what will he do if he finds me?"

Alice pauses a moment, as if considering, then her frown deepens. "He'll laugh."

It's such an odd comment. Such an odd  _uncomforting_ comment that Bella has to sit down too. She sinks in to the plush, unused mattress and lays back, hand brushing the fine velvet of the cloak and staring at the ceiling.

"What is this place?" She asks, tracing the grooved patterns on the ceiling.

"A cottage. Esme was building it . . . I got, I got carried away after Jasper left." Alice sinks back into the mattress beside her, her delicate head resting on a lock of Bella's hair. "When I looked into the future then, it was still you and Edward. I told Esme that when you two were newlyweds you would need a place of your own, so she started building . . ."

Bella feels the hole in her chest stretch and constrict. The hungry, ebbing knot seems to lodge itself in her throat when she speaks. "This was going to be our place?"

"Yeah."

"Well," Bella is not sure what to say to that. She's not sure what to say about a lot of things anymore. "I'm sorry I wasted Esme's efforts."

"Not wasted." Alice says, albeit sadly. "I've been staying here since Jasper's been home. "I want him to have the house and our old room. I'm the one who went and . . . fucked up our marriage."

"Well, I'm glad you like my house." Bella says quietly. Alice doesn't really respond, but she makes a noise. Somewhere between a huff and a sigh. The sound of fabric moving on the bed reminds her of the Volturi cloak between them. "Are you excited to see him?"

That question seems to break Alice. "Oh, Bella I don't know."

* * *

Saturday comes, Rosalie and Alice arrive at the Swan house with pillows and overnight bags. Although their good manners prevent them from dropping their bags at the door, they instead make a show of going upstairs, dropping their stuff and kicking off their shoes.

Charlie witnesses only enough to say  _hello_ and  _later girls_ as he prepares for his fishing trip with Billy. Up and at em. Bright and early. Bella feels another odd twist in her gut, somewhere deep inside of her she has known that Charlie might be in danger too, but not until the wolves surrounded him did she realize just how much.

She catches him on his way out and hugs him tight. Tighter than she means too, tighter than strictly necessary.

Charlie, confused by her display, one-arm hugs her. He pats her shoulder and when she still doesn't let go. He murmurs, "You okay, kid?"

She's not. "Yeah, I'm fine. Just," She searches for the correct words, the right thing to say. What can she say without alarming him? That she's so happy she came to stay in Forks? Despite everything? That she's so happy she made him proud when her acceptance letters came in? That she's so thankful for a dad who loves and cares for her?

No.

She can't say any of it.

She'll say it when she goes off to college. When she puts Forks in her rearview mirror and carves a new chapter of her life.

She'll tell him all of it when she survives.

"Just thanks for the advice."

Charlie huffs and gives her another squeeze, still one-armed. "I'm a fountain of wisdom, kid. Ask and you shall receive." And then he's gone, into his police cruiser and down the road. To safety. Hopefully.

Alice rests her cheek on her shoulder, her tiny arms coming around her in an embrace that seems like air. "He'll be okay." She says quietly and gives Bella a tentative squeeze. "I've seen it."

For once, Alice's visions don't make her feel any better.

* * *

"You know, this reminds me of camping when we were kids." Jacob says, poking at the small fire they built. Bella locks her jaw, trying to keep her teeth chattering to a minimum. Jacob frowns. "Are you  _really_ still cold?"

"N-no," She grits out between clicks of her teeth. "I j-just, I'm so excited to be here. I'm shaking in my boots."

With a deadpan indifference, Jacob unzips his parka and hands it to her and, if Bella did not already have knowledge of the wolves' freakish body temperatures, she would have refused, but she quickly slips the jacket over her other one, snuggly yanking up the zipper.

It's still warm.

She snuggles in, pulling the fur-lined hood down over her face.

"I'm sorry, what was that thing you said about our smell, Eddy?" Jacob calls across the fire to Edward. He gets a disgusted noise in response.

"Don't fight." Bella warns and casts glance over to where Edward stands vigil, away from the fire, just at the tree line of the rocks. His expression is impassive, annoyed. It's been even more awkward since they climbed up here. Edward has kept his distance, knowing his cool body temperatures would only hurt her and that the fire would only hurt him.

Jacob lifts a bag. "Do you want to make marshmallows?"

* * *

Everything goes as plan until it doesn't. The sounds of battle rage up the side of the mountain and Edward stands still as stone beside her, listening to the battle and giving her play-by-play. "It's over. Jasper and Emmett are burning the bodies."

Bella releases a long, chilly breath. As Alice said, her Volturi cloak has done enough to keep her warm in the daylight hours. The thick woven material works as a conductor for heat, drawing the rays of the sun onto her in the middle of the day. Still, it feels wrong to wear and she knows she must look ridiculous.

"That's a relief," she says and her eyes flint back to the trees beyond. Where is Jacob when you need him? Honestly.

Edward turns to her, expression pursed. "I have something for you."

Before she can think too hard on it, or at all, she is staring at a velvet box— _the_ velvet box—the one she saw in Edward's bedroom weeks ago, the one that made her turn tale and  _run._

She wants to run now just at the sight of it.

"It would be best," he says, almost conversationally, "for you to wear it. A detail the Volturi won't miss."

 _Oh._ She thinks, first sadly and then relieved.  _Oh, thank god._

She takes the box from him, careful to avoid touching, and peers down at the little velvet box. The antique ring inside is nestled in silk, gleaming in the mid-morning sun. She cannot help the quiet awe in her voice.

"It was my mother's." Edward says, again as if this were a fact that doesn't matter. As if this were any other ring. As if this just happened to be the ring he grabbed on the way out the door. Not the ring he meant to give her when they thought they were spending eternity together.

That sends a pang through her all her own. She snaps the box shut and hands it back. Her hand covers the fine textured box. She takes a breath. "I can't wear this."

"Bella—" Edward looks ready to argue, to explain, to point out how and why he's right and she should do as he says. Despite her pride.

"No." She says firmly. "I know it's just pretend and I know it's for my safety, but—Edward take it. I can't wear it."

"It doesn't have to mean anything."

"But it does. To you. You should save it and give it to someone who will love it."

"I want you to have it. It's yours."

"Don't ruin the memory of your mother's ring with me. You should save it and give it to someone you can share forever with." The words taste like poison in her mouth. She was supposed to be the one. Now she's not. Simple as that. Painful as breathing fiber glass.

She extends her hand again, her knuckles pressing against his chest. "You shouldn't be giving this to me."

"Why not? It's mine to give."

Frustration bridles her. "You've given up so much for me already. I am not taking your—your last connection to your human life. It's not mine to take." Edward stares at her, impassive, unmoving. "Edward, I cannot take this from you too."

"You've taken nothing from me that I didn't willingly give."

"The why are you never at the house when I'm there?" She asks, direct, fierce, not the time. "Why do you leave as soon as I show up and only come back when I leave. I've noticed."

"I figured you wanted some time—"

"Edward, it's your house! I should have the power to drive you out of your own house. Forget everything else, forget everything we've been through. I do not want to take anything else from you." Bella fixes him with a hopefully incredulous look and sighs. "Edward, I swear I will throw your mother's ring down this cliff.  _Please._ "

It may be a mix of things, the lack of time, the desperation in her voice, but Edward finally accepts the ring. His cool hand covering hers and tucking away the precious box into the pocket of his jeans. The relief she feels is immediate and short lived.

Edward is frowning deeply, eye brewing a storm.

"Edward?"

"Yes?"

"I love you," she says quietly, as things like this should be said, so very quietly. She can see the minute changes in his demeanor, the way his eyes find hers and his lips part, but his relief too, is short lived. Bella struggles to keep the line of her mouth from shaking. "But we're not good for each other. Not anymore."

Edward's arms come around her then, a distant echo of that night weeks ago, when he intended to ask her, but his touch is gentler now, less desperate. She does not feel crushed by the presence of him, just held.

"You were my first love." He says, and his voice sounds as though it has been dragged through gravel. Bella can feel the rumble of it against her cheek and screws her eyes shut tighter.

"You were mine too."

Edward's hand strokes a calming breath from her, a smooth trail down her upper-back. It's strangely lulling in the way she knows its not supposed to be. In how easy she feels it would be to just try again, pack up her doubts and bare her teeth, but that feels like defeat. And so much harder than simply going with it.

"If you ever change your mind. I'll be here." And then he leans forward, cool lips skimming across her forehead and in a moment of muscle memory, Bella leans in, eyes lulling closed as the moment sweeps over her.

"I hate to break the mood," A calm, cool voice calls from below. For a moment, Bella cannot see anyone, but the next she is behind Edward, his arm around her middle, and Edward crouching low, angry.

It takes her a moment to peer out around Edward's shoulder to find a man standing at their little campsite. He looks like a cut out from one of Alice's magazines. A tall, imposing figure with wonderful posture and slanted cheekbones.

He is the man she met in Italy.

The one who had been Alice's mate before.

"Demetri," Edward hisses, low and predatory.

Something like a smile curves on Demetri's mouth. His inquisitive red eyes flash. "That cloak," he says, voice melodic, "doesn't belong to you."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello! i had to get a big girl job to support my big girl lifestyle
> 
> not much to say by way of note, but hey, Demetri's finally fuckin' here. ain't that rad, lads? i really wanted to get this done so hopefully i could read comments while i'm slaving away at work. (please give me validation, i am dying here) but otherwise its been a normal month. birthdays and fire-eating, sims 4 and job searches. this story is at the same time so easy to write and so hard to finish, that's why its a challenge. originally, everything tied up in five chapters and demetri showed up in every single one of them.
> 
> Originally: alice and jasper get back together, bella and edward never break up, everything proceeds as normal: BD happens (or, doesn't happen, depending on who you ask) and alice meets demetri again (formally) when she crosses no man's land to meet Aro. demetri leaves with alice? or doesn't? you see why i went this way?
> 
> please review, they make me so happy
> 
> \- cafeanna


	7. Chapter 7

It occurs to her then that she has only ever seen one other Tracker before Demetri.

James, the one who started it all.

The man with windblown hair and sleepless eyes. He had the same build she saw in her own father, the wide shoulders, strong thighs, and quick steps—all enhanced with vampiric grace. He looked like the sort of man who would not look amiss at a hunting lodge or dive bar. Maybe prettier, but not amiss.

And then, there's Demetri, beautiful and immaculate.

His high aristocratic air and a face that looked more suited in a Raphaelite painting. Despite his gift, he does not look rough or brutish like James. He is posed, like a slender blade going in for the kill. He is finely dressed and, in the wilderness, it is an oddly terrifying juxtaposition.

And she  _is_  terrified.

Especially when he spoke directly  _to her._

Although Demetri is—was—Alice's mate, and that association should comfort her, it does not. She sees him and she is reminded of stories of men who have families, and lives, and go to work, but one day slaughter several bystanders with nary a wink. Perfect, closed lip smiles and rotten teeth.

Demetri strolls towards them, movements purposeful and quick.

"It seems you left your coven at a disadvantage, Edward." Demetri says, moving still. "You have the greatest gift; it seems only natural that you should join the fight."

"I would not leave my mate behind." Edward says through his teeth.

"Ah, yes," Demetri's eyes flicker to her a moment in distaste. "I'll deal with you in a moment,  _piccolina._ " Edward tenses, the muscles under his sweater bunching in disagreement. Demetri finishes his half-rotation around them, from his entrance to his stopping point he has been picking off his fine leather gloves and now, he pockets them. Almost nonchalantly, he asks, "Well, who is going to stop me if you are preoccupied?"

Edward's expression turns blank for a moment and then, the sound of snapping branches.

Edward's gaze cuts to the left and Bella turns too, just in time to see a red-haired woman in a patchwork coat followed by a man who eclipsed her height.

Victoria.

* * *

In a moment that feels oddly reminiscent of her eighteenth birthday, Edward shoves her back as he lunges to meet Victoria and the newcomer.

She is tripping through the air, not enough momentum to send her flying, but just enough to send her careening towards the firepit. That is, until, Demetri snatches her arm, pulling her up before she could fall among the ashes and embers.

His nose wrinkles. "Honestly, I would assume you stole that coat had you seemed the type."

Bella doesn't have the words to answer.

A snarl breaks out over the rocks and the sound of  _something_ slamming into the trees and into the campsite. Bella turns her head in time to find Seth— _Seth_ of  _all_ the wolves—pacing towards them, chin tipped, teeth bared, and a snarl rising up in his throat.

It clicks to her then—Demetri's red eyes, that he's holding her—and she scrambles up, using Demetri as leverage as she practically climbs on top of him. "Not him! Not him! He's good!"

Seth pauses only momentarily before his wolfish, confused expression turns back to something else—the vampire Victoria brought. The growl that echoes in him is low, pitched deeper than Seth's baby voice may allow. All the same, he lunges at the other vampire, draws snapping and—true to Jasper's direction—keeping out of the vampire's grasp.

She barely has time to hiss out a breath of relief before Demetri grabs her again, yanking her off of him, but still keeping a hand on her shoulder.

"You  _will_ explain." Demetri says and although his tone is authoritative and directed on her, his eyes are distant, watching the scrambled mess of fighting. Bella follows his gaze and nearly shrieks when she sees Edward go down hard, Victoria on top of him, claws sinking in, but Edward  _rolls—_

"Now would be appropriate." Demetri says primly and, when she doesn't answer, his eyes cut to her, annoyance lacing his tone. "Oh please, you're not in shock, are you?"

How can she be in shock if the shock is happening right now?

"They're werewolves." She breathes and nearly screams again when the new vampire wiggles out of Seth's grasp, jumps over him and  _almost, almost_ catches him.

Demetri tusks. "Those are not werewolves, you dullard."

The insult is not as scathing as it sounds, but Bella still rises to the bait. "I am only telling you what I know!"

She tugs against his hold to—to what? To help? How can she possibly help? A vampire and a not-werewolf were much better suited to take down Victoria and the newcomer than she. Perhaps she just needed the security of being free, without Demetri holding onto her like she might dash over the side of the cliff.

Demetri stares at her a moment, eyes narrowing before his upper lip curls. "Then you are useless." He drops her arm and turns back to the thrall unfolding before them.

She thinks, for a moment, that he might join the fight, stepping forward before he collects himself in stillness, settling in to watch her ex-boyfriend and some fifteen-year-old not-werewolf duke it out in a losing death match.

Demetri's insult finally rings true.

She feels  _useless._

More than ever. More than the times before when the physical strength and agility might have helped her, but a deep emotional uselessness. A feeling so crippling, she is ashamed to say she knows it well.

It feels like having no dreams beyond the pipe-dream future she dreamed up with Edward. It feels like having to go along with any number of her mother's great schemes because she is too young to be on her own and loves her mother too much to leave her. It feels like watching her grandmother dying, unable to find any recollection in her pale blue eyes, unable to even hold her veiny pale hand in the end.

At a time, she may had been able to wrap herself in the physical strength of a vampire, with the beauty and grace of something cool and deadly, but inside she would always be the same—mentally and emotionally weak.

The feeling lobs a lump in her throat. The physical ache of it making her reach for her neck, hoping to alleviate it some, but her fingers tangle in the diamond chain of the cloak's pin.

Her fingers brush against the cold silver pin that loops the eyelet around her throat. It's decorative, but sharp. Alice had insisted to her to be careful.

The sound of rock breaking brings her attention back to the fight and she is horrified to find the newcomer had shaken Seth off.

She is reminded of the story that Jacob told her last night, the one she always liked to hear and would pester him until he did so. It was another story of the Cold Ones, a vampire seeking revenge for her mate's death, came to slaughter a tribe and finding only one wolf to protect his people. The odds weighed heavily against them.

But it is not a sad story, it is a story of courage, of power, of humanity—the story of the Third Wife.

Bella yanks hard and the delicate chain snaps free, her fingers curling tight and sweaty around the silver pin.

It's not a knife, but it would do.

It doesn't take much, but with the correct pressure against her palm, her skin splits and breaks. Then there is a moment where she is separate from herself and the pain she is inflicting, Bella  _pulls._

The smell of blood—to her sense—fills her nose. The smell of old pennies and tin, her mouth waters with the urge to vomit, but the fear—that cold, calculating fear—keeps her upright. Like a statue on the mountain, like the Third Wife in the battle, she stands, outstretched hand bleeding into the rocks by her feet.

She watches the scrambled fight before her slow into pictured stillness.

The newcomer has his hands around Edward's throat and Victoria has his arm. The smell of her blood perfuming the air is intoxicating to them, drawing them in, inviting them.

The stillness is then shattered when Seth launches at the newcomer, a tackle in the shoulder and the quick, bloodless dismemberment of one arm and then the other.

Bella quickly closes her palm as Edward twists in Victoria's grip, grabbing a fistful of that long, red hair and pulling her neck back into a long graceful arch. She wants to cover her eyes, or look away, but instead she watches—horrified—as Edward sinks his teeth into the supple curve of her throat, and pulling away a chunk of flesh.

Bella can make-out shapes, lines of red and white, fur and flesh. The newcomer is dragged away just as quickly, his screams racking up the sides of the mountain, calling for Victoria, Victoria—

But her nightmare's attention is otherwise taken.

Edward snaps her leg neck as she tries to get up, moving for the kill as Victoria struggles to limb away. He grabs her ankle and something—somewhere—cracks. She screams, loud, shrilly, pained, and  _real._ The sound of it, the anguish, the pain, jolts something strange and protective in her. Almost as if hearing the noise in any other context.

Victoria is being dragged backward, towards the firepit when Bella realizes how close she is.

Victoria is five paces away. Her nails are scraping into the rock, cutting deep gouges into the earth, her teeth chattering with fear as she tries to speak—

It's a name.

It's James.

The original Tracker.

"Wait—" She calls out but it's too late. Edward sets her ablaze on their old campfire, the place where she and Jacob sat the night before, roasting marshmallows and telling stories, the Cold Ones, the Third Wife, the legends passed down one generation to the next. It becomes Victoria's pyre.

Victoria goes up in flames, her long red hair curling with the fire that will burn her until she is nothing but ash and soot.

Demetri takes her by the shoulder again, lifting her even though she cannot remember falling to her knees. "You're getting blood on that coat." He says simply and something warm and silk-like is tied around her hand, pulled taut. "Refrain from screaming, please."

And then she is off, down the side of the mountain, clinging to Demetri like an afterthought.

* * *

Before she can consider screaming and losing the residual air in her lungs, Demetri stops. The punch-gut feeling of a sudden stop reminds her of a roller-coaster ride she would have never tried out. All at once, her stomach and intestines are slammed into her spine and then bouncing back with the force of a racket ball.

She gages for air, a deep hollowing sound as she is unceremoniously set on her feet. Her feet that she is not quite ready to stand on just yet.

"Careful there," a low voice, not Demetri's tusks somewhere above her. She tips her head back to look up into Felix's smiling face. His tree-trunk arms cradling her against his chest. "Little winded there, sweetheart?"

Understatement of the century.

She drags deeply through her nose and out through her mouth.

The smell of pine and something acidic-sweet scents the air.

"I think I might throw up."

"Well, we can't have that," Another voice, younger this time, calls from a greater distance. Bella rolls her neck boneless to find Jane and Alec standing under a canopy of trees. Alec's lips curve, indicating he had been the one to speak. "It's always so annoying when your meal loses theirs."

The deep predatory stare that follows the statement just nothing to calm her insides.

"Can we please," Demetri's voice, direct and cold, cuts through the bickering that erupted between the siblings. "Would either of you like to take care of our special friend?"

Alec steps forward and Bella's heart slams in her chest as she expects pain, a numbing of senses, a cut to blackness—anything. Alec, however, bounces on the balls of his feet and launches himself upward, into the trees and out of sight.

"That should take care of your  _mate_." Demetri says and, it might be the fear talking, but Bella swears his mouth tears around that word. Mate. She is at once curious and then terrified.

"What will he do to Edward?" She whispers, anything louder feels too much.

"Nothing he won't survive, you needn't worry." Demetri assures, or dismisses, Bella cannot quite tell with his unaffected politeness.

Bella feels her reference of axis tilting upright at Felix helps her, his palms sure against her shoulders, but not leaving them. Her legs still feel gelatinous. "There we are, love."

"'m not your love." Bella mumbles, more whiplash than actual annoyance. Demetri tusks. "'m gonna throw up on you." She wants to point—she thinks she points—maybe she points, but Demetri looks barely scathed by the comment.

"Regardless of that," Demetri says, picking at the seam of his coat. "We have arrived here with a special message from Lord Aro about your impending arrangement." Demetri's fine gold brows raise, but Bella cannot scry the meaning behind them. "He wanted us to let you know, in private, of course, that should you ever leave the Cullen clan, you would have a place in our guard."

Bella wants to  _laugh,_ but the unease feeling in her stomach doesn't ease.

She can hardly imagine being a vampire now, much less a member of the vampire mafia. The vampire mafia that has already carried her to a secondary location and is offering her membership.

She really, really wants to laugh.

"However," Demetri adds and the distinct clip in how he rolls his  _r'_ s makes her think of how Alice clips her  _t'_ s. Purposefully and with full drama. "It has come to my attention that you and the Cullen clan no longer  _have_ an arrangement, do you?"

If she didn't already feel it, Bella is sure her stomach would be churning right now. How much had Demetri heard? Did he piece together that if her and Edward weren't together anymore then she would not be a vampire?

She can feel her pulse picking up a sure rhythm in her chest.

"What arrangement are you talking about?" She manages.

Demetri snorts, sleeve picking over, he pierces her with those blood-red eyes and purses his lips. "I am talking about your arrangement to enter the Cullen clan within the year, as was promised."

"You do realize," Jane's tiny voice rises up, beautiful as a bell, "the consequences of defying the Volturi, do you not,  _Bella_?"

Bella has never been more thankful for whatever weird magic wraps around her mind and keeps her safe from Edward's mind-reading and Jane's pain. However, she can imagine Jane would have no qualms giving her a taste of physical pain, if the mood took her.

But it's not  _just_ her, is it? It's the Cullen family.

All they sacrificed for her. All they've done for her. All they've built, just to be done in because she changed her mind.

"I am not," she says, pushing back thoughts of torture, her own revulsion, and the still spinning forest. "I  _have not_ broken my promise to Lord Aro." The words sound strange in her mouth, the inclination, the expression on the accent. "I will become a vampire, but," she pauses and takes a deep breath, "but not as Edward's mate."

There is silence for a moment.

Then Felix breaks it with, "So, you're saying you are single?"

Demetri's heavy gaze never leaves her face and Bella never leaves Demetri's. She can feel the steady weight of Felix's hands on her shoulders, keeping her aloft so all her energy can go towards not throwing up and not breaking eye contact.

If she were a wizard of reading expressions, she would say Demetri looks annoyed by this answer.

* * *

Felix offers to carry her onto the battlefield, her stomach and limbs not yet able to make the trek, and not yet equipped to make the run. However, before she can put too much thought into having the bear-like man carry her, Demetri is scooping her up with the firm, efficiency of a midwife carrying a newborn baby and speeds them to where they need to be.

They come to a stop a touch slower this time, her stomach not slamming or twisting or reconfiguring itself on the impact, and the slide back to her feet is smooth. Demetri's hand remains on her elbow, keeping her aloft.

They start walking.

Felix and Jane falling in step with Demetri, their long capes trailing over the grass.

The field smells like fire and soot, a combustion of gasoline and something different, something she cannot put a name to other than charred vampire. The steady pyre in the center of the field catches an upward draft, taking the smell and the glittery ashes up the mountain rather than towards town.

She hears her name and, when she can look up, finds the Cullens across the field, waiting.

Edward is still missing—but then, so is Alec—but otherwise, everyone is unharmed and accounted for. All of them have tears in their clothes, their hair and faces covered in ashes and soot, making them look like orphaned children in a dust bowel portrait.

Emmett and Rosalie are hip-to-hip, he leans down to kiss her temple, and Rosalie lays a comforting hand on his chest. Carlisle and Esme stand a little off to the side in a similar pose, but Jasper and Alice break off the symmetry of the picture. They stand apart. Jasper with his hands in his pockets and Alice standing anxiously in the center.

An orphan indeed.

"Interesting," Demetri notes and Jasper, as if in retaliation, steps closer to Alice, a shadow over her shoulder once more. Then, one of Jasper's hands reaches out, fingertips touching the outer side of Alice's wrist and then threading their fingers together.

They come to a stop a few feet away and, reflexively, Carlisle and Esme step forward, chins raised and an arm outstretched each. Without thinking, Bella raises a hand to them, their calm, warm gold eyes and concerned expressions, people who  _care_ about her.

A hard tug pulls her back. "Not so fast." Demetri's grip tightens then, almost as if he thought she had a chance of breaking away. Carlisle and Esme, however, stop. Their comforting embrace turning cold as they draw back into themselves.

"Has she done something wrong?" Carlisle asks in that way of his. Like a father confident his child did not start the fight on the playground. Bella is dually touched and chastened by the gesture.

Demetri glares for another moment, mouth pursing again. "In technicality, I suppose." His head turns, finding the member of the family he wants, he speaks, his slow, sure voice sounding musical to her ears. "Alice."

Bella watches the line of Alice's back, ramrod straight, her jaw an unmovable line.

"Most esteemed guards of the Volturi," Alice nods her head and the tension in her shoulders bunches as she takes in air to speak. "Is dear Alec playing with Edward, then?"

Confirming her fears, Felix guffaws. Jane smiles thinly. "You know my brother," she murmurs, "he always enjoys playing with dear Edward."

Jane's confirmation makes her skin crawl, but Alice looks largely nonplussed by the comment. "I had a feeling."

"Well, we all know about your feelings, Alice." Felix says, his voice a low baritone of a laugh. His eyes narrow, flickering past Alice onto the burning pyre. His eyes narrow.

"But the fact remains," Jane says, her high and girlish voice cutting through the polite chatter. "That she," Bella has never felt more verbally assaulted by a word, "is still human."

"A tactical maneuver." Alice says gamely.

It occurs to Bella then, that Alice being front and center is because she is meant to do a majority of the talking, just like in Italy. She wonders if the Cullens always let Alice do the talking when it comes to the Volturi.

"Why have a crazed newborn on our hands when we can have a human to use as a lure?" Alice says this so matter-of-fact, for a moment, Bella cannot find it in herself to argue.

"And wearing one of our cloaks?" Felix asks, his voice a low rumble as if holding in laughter. "That nearly led us astray."

It takes Bella a moment to realize that she is no longer wearing the cloak Alice gave her. She panics only for a moment before realizing that Demetri has it, folded over his arm like a waiter. Still, he stands erect, the perfect stillness of him making her thinking of a hunting dog lying in wait.

Alice's lips curve into a smile she has never seen before. She has seen sarcastic, she has seen sardonic, but never has she seen this Devil-may-care look. As if Alice saw the world erupting into flames and it  _pleased_ her.

"It's been several decades. I haven't had a good fight in a while. I couldn't have you ruining my fun." Alice's voice is all boisterous and gall, and for a moment, Bella realizes that she means it. All of it. As if in her old life, Alice was a warrior guard who not only fought blood battles, but missed the carnage.

"Oh, come now,  _caro mio_ ," It is Demetri who speaks then, voice like velvet and silver, the very materials that made up Alice's cloak and Alice's past. His gaze is almost teasing as he looks at her now. His top lip curving up to reveal the edges of his teeth. "You have never enjoyed the fighting as much as Felix or Jane."

It's a presumptuous line. It's affectionate. It's  _flirtatious._

Alice is struck into silence, her eyes narrowing at the challenge. Her eyes have fixated on Demetri in a look not dissimilar to the one Demetri gives her, a slanted expression, all bunched eyebrows, narrow eyes, and a pursed mouth—fighting a smile.

Bella watches Jasper buckle as if struct by some invisible force. The guards' expressions flicker between confusion, indifference, and muse. Demetri says nothing else, eyes sweeping over Jasper and then Alice, who is still gripping his hand.

Then, Jasper slips his fingers from Alice's grasp and half-turns, an unsteady calm settling on his brow.

"Jasper?" Alice whispers, and Bella watches the ridged line of his back as he looks at her, his wife, over his shoulder.

Jasper murmurs something she doesn't catch and then turns his gaze to Demetri and for one terrifying second, the two of them look like the predators they are, creatures of nightmares, baring tooth and claw, ready to tear each other apart.

Demetri lifts his chin, his red eyes gleaming.

For a fraction of a second, his grip on her arm loosens, like he might drop her in order to fight and Bella has never been more anxious about being let go of then—

Then—

Jasper steps aside.

He turns to the tree line and starts walking.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello! i am moving/switching jobs/kinda sick rn.
> 
> wow, i'm fuckin' up everyone's life. you okay jasper?
> 
> inspo for how Bella feels about seeing Demetri again? Asks no one. Funnily enough. I live next to a state park and one day, while hiking on a trail that requires you to climb across rocks and wade into a river, I saw a man, dressed in a full three-piece with lapels and a flower, and his hair gelled back, and he was just . . . doing everything I was doing, but more gracefully, and in a suit.
> 
> And like the dumbass I am, I followed him, from a distance (completely opting the Murders TM that happened there when my mom was a girl) and I know he wasn't a fucking ghost because he got into his car and so did I and I continued to follow him until I lost him around a bend . . . right around where I live. Can you imagine I have trouble sleeping? Yes?
> 
> Am I not ashamed to say I wrote this listening to Boys by Lizzo? No, absolutely not, that woman is a fuckin' fox. Demetri is the pretty boys)
> 
> please review, they make me so happy
> 
> \- cafeanna


	8. Chapter 8

After the flight back from Volterra, Bella never saw Edward and Alice fighting again.

She supposed they did. Knows they did. In private. Waging battles in their own Bella-free time where they screamed at each other. The air between them had never quite thinned after Volterra. Even the car ride back to the Cullen’s was unbearable, the trapped heat filled with every hateful thing the two of them wanted to say to another. Now, in the safety of the Cullen house, at Alice’s heels, Edward is shouting at her—long, unintelligible things—and Alice rises to the bait with the ferocity of a panther defending her territory.

Esme keeps Bella behind her, as if thinking the fight might actually turn physical, but quickly her attention is taken by her children, tearing the jagged hole of her family further open.

The Volturi have retreated, for now. They promised to stick close to the Seattle area, weeding out any hangers that Victoria might have created, but Alice had slipped a cell phone into Demetri’s hand, a slim black burner phone, like a secret. To contact them, but its existence had enraged Edward.

“—if you had wanted to rejoin them all along, then why did you come to our family? Why did you meet Jasper? Why does everyone else have to suffer because you’re unhappy?” Edward is shouting, voice frantic and too loud. Bella wants to cover her ears, but she knows she will still be able to hear, no matter how deep into the house she sinks, past the couches, past the tables, the book shelves, the photographs, into the back study, _further—_

Edward had been returned to them, followed by a smirking, curious Alec, as soon as Jasper disappeared. Alice calling after him, unable to get a response, unable to follow.

The exchange back to the Cullen family, between Esme and Carlisle’s loving, awkward embrace had been as cold as Demetri’s outright indifference.

In the corridor, she can still see them—the family—circling one another like animals in the wild, the divide between them a battle no one wants to cross.

Alice lifts her chin, tiny fists curling as she meets Edward’s gaze head-on. “I am not the reason Bella doesn’t love you anymore, Edward.”

That stung. That really, really hurt. Bella can feel the weight of it just as if Alice had struck her.

It hurts her more to feel like she’s right.

It’s a half-truth.

It’s a mess.

And it hurts.

“I suggest you two stop,” Carlisle says, the voice of fatherly authority and calm. Bella can see the tension wrinkling his forehead, the shelf of his brow finally making him into the vampire he is. Teeth behind his lips appearing, just barely. “Before either of you says something you will regret.”

He says it with such assurance, Bella cannot help but find proof of error.

Edward snorts, indignant. “She regrets every breath she’s taken when she is away from her tracker! Can’t you see that?” Edward weighs himself back under Carlisle’s hand, but his verbal assault is not to be held at bay. “Once you know,” His eyes shift from Carlisle, to Esme, to Rosalie, to Alice. “It is hard not to see it in every gesture.”

Alice makes a noise sort of like a cry and Bella decides she cannot watch anymore.

She turns the corner to the back study and shuts the door as quietly as she can.

It doesn’t matter. She can still _hear_ them.

“Is that what you want?” Alice demands, voice rising in her fury. She hears shifting, feet, a struggle? Alice’s voice is louder, but she is further away. “I am not happy! Is that what you want to hear? Or have you been ignoring me this entire time? I miss him, is that what you want to know? I miss him and I loved him and he was this part of me that—that you would never _understand,_ Edward, because you never had someone _love you_ like that—”

Bella sits with her back to the door, hands pressed over her ears, but the noise still permeates.

-

She finds Jasper in the shadows with her, silent, unbreathing, eyes downcast.

It takes her too long to realize, but once she spots him amidst her tear-blurred fury, she wonders how she could have missed him, sitting at one of Carlisle’s two chairs before his great desk, as if he takes consultations in his home.

Then, she remembers the fight still happening beyond the door, and if she can hear it, how well can he?

She stares at him a moment longer, saying nothing, thinking him dead and the thought of it spikes a strange charge of panic through her. _Does Edward know he’s here?_ She wonders and then the next a shameful, second-hand disappointment overwhelms her. _Of course, he does._

“I didn’t think you would come here.” She says quietly and, robotically, like a doll, he moves; head tipping up so she can see him in that sparse evening light.

She finds herself catching her breath again.

Jasper never looked quite right after he returned from his trip to wherever. His eyes are still amber, a bleeding between the gold of the Cullen’s and the red of those newborns, of the Volturi. It never occurs to her until this moment, that maybe Jasper had been bad on his journey away, that that had made Edward cagey, protective, angry.

Alice not only drove Jasper out of the family, but drove him to kill.

Jasper regards her as if she were furniture he had not realized was there, a piece out of place. That’s what she feels.

“Emmett went to go look for you,” she offers, but his expression does not change.

He keeps staring.

“You’re scared,” he says, his thin voice a faint echo of that accent—old Texan, she now knows. His mouth is a deep line. His brows furrow. “Of me?”

“You startled me,” she says, almost gasping on the breath. She never realized until she saw Esme how still the Cullen can stand, for hours at a time, without the human need to shift or scratch or hum. They can stand in perfect stillness, almost statue-like for hours. She considers making a joke—a bad one—about becoming street performers in New York, one of those eves and avenues where person statues stood and collected money, but she taps down the impulse.

Jasper does not look like he wants to laugh right now.

He sits still, haunting in his stillness, his back erect, his jaw clenched. He looks at her and there is something violent and rueful in his gaze, a taunting, terrible smile.

She feels her pulse quicken.

“You have a question for me.” It’s not a question either, it is a flat statement, a solid fact that sinks through her. “Ask it.”

“Why did you leave earlier?” She forces herself to say it, let the words roll off her tongue and become real, flowering into that too deep, too much, question. Jasper’s grin looks full of mirth now.

“I have never met Alice’s mate before this,” Jasper says, his voice has a hint of airiness in it. As if he were underwater, in a dream, still wrapped in those thoughts she interrupted. She presses her lips together, tighter. “He never wanted to meet me either, I suppose. I don’t think either of us took it too personally.”

It’s a joke at his expense. Bella curls her lips like a smile, but it is gone too quickly, anchored back by her confusion and fear.

Bella stares at him and gets that feeling—that human feeling—to comfort. But, she is not sure how to comfort Jasper, more so how to comfort someone she fears like Jasper. Someone who has a history weak blood resistance and looking the way he does now. Still, the longing overshoots the needling fear and she draws closer, surprising him, surprising herself.

She does not touch him, even if he were human, she does not think he would be the type take comfort in that. She stands close and sinks into the chair in front of him, leaning forward so that they can talk properly. A heart to heart.

Jasper watches her do this with a faint amusement, lips pressing against his teeth.

“Are you—” She starts and pauses, teeth catching the inside of her cheeks, she considers her words, reads them over, tries again. She meets his eyes this time. “How are you doing?”

Jasper laughs, not loud like he would with Emmett, or a scoff like he would with Carlisle, it’s a bark. A short, mirthless bark that nearly shatters her confidence. Everything is brick by brick.

What is she doing? Why does she think she can help? Why is she trying?

Still, she holds firm, just as he is resolute in his mirth, she will in her empathy.

He stares at her a long moment, studying her, and she realizes he must be filtering through her emotions, testing the air in the room. His lips curl, as if in disgust, but before she can truly damn the idea, he speaks again, and softer this time.

“I feel sick.” He says, his voice hitching on an emotion she cannot quite name. Hurt, but also something else. Something rotten. “For the first time in a long time, I feel truly and physically ill. It’s like when I was in the war.” He blinks, almost as if to ward off tears and Bella can feel something rising in her. “I remember it, its like a grief brought my memories of similar pain back. When we were standing in the field—when they saw each other—they loved each other so much, so much, so much more than she ever loved me.”

Alice’s words echo back to her, ten-fold. The only man she never saw coming. Her lover, her smiling, bloody tracker, that introduced her to the world she knows, that gave her light and life and purpose. The man she loved unconditionally until the moment she decided she needed something else.

Someone like Jasper who was also ragged and broken and needing.

Bella feels her own stomach drop and, she thinks, she _knows_ this is a bad idea. She should have never tried to help someone when she doesn’t know how. She feels embarrassed then, for bringing up such pain for him, and pity, pity for his words, for his situation, for Alice. She hates that Edward is allowing the fight to happen outside knowing Jasper can hear every word.

Still, that part of her hands to make it better. She wants to make it right.

“I don’t think you can measure thing like that,” she says quietly, mouth drying up with her words. She licks her lips, fingers worrying together into a knot. “She loved you, you loved her, she loved him. Love is, love is not a measuring cup—”

She hears the sound of wind before she can comprehend it. Jasper’s smooth rise to his feet, his angry amber eyes burning down on her, his mouth in a grim line. “You don’t understand anything.” He says coldly and it’s just as loud as if he had screamed it in her ear. Bella can hear the words rattling through her head.

She can feel the mettle rising up in her, taste his anger on the edge of her tongue, driving her forward. “Don’t,” she says quietly, muffled by the blade of her teeth. “Yell at me.”

Jasper glares at her, dark eyes in even darker shadows. “Get out of here Bella. I don’t want your sympathy, your empathy, your pity—take it with you when you go.” And then, in a gesture as if to show her out, he gives it to her, all at once.

Bella chokes on the sudden _rush_ of feeling. Her chest clamps tight, feeling awful and sick and enraged in her own rite. She can feel Jasper’s anger, the faint taste from before nothing to the betrayal, the apathy, the feeling of the one you love, loving another so much that your heart _burns—_

She clutches her chest, hoping to elevate the feeling, but it does not relent. Jasper’s emotions are tarry and sick, sticking to her like a second-skin, as if they were her own. The infect her and sink in deeper and deeper until she is sick with them.

She can’t breathe.

She sits for a moment, settling into it, brain rushing to focus on that, that that is hers, what she needs. _Anger._

She takes a breath when she looks up, staring into those dark eyes, that stone-face. “You may be able to feel and control emotions Jasper, but that doesn’t mean you understand them.” Jasper blinks at her, one moment furious, the next confused as she rises to her feet, chin high and in her best, nail-bitten fury says, “I did not pity you before, but now I do!” Before running out the door.

She feels for a moment victorious, angry, scared—

But then she runs headlong into Edward, whose arms come around her in an instant. “Bella,” he says, voice dropping to her ear, too close. She shuffles back, but his hands are still on her, checking her over. “Are you alright?”

Part of her wants to laugh. Part of her wants to scream. If Jasper had hurt her, wouldn’t the entire family know by now? Wouldn’t Edward see it in Jasper’s mind, as clear as he saw him tearing through her on her birthday?

“I’m fine,” she says and steps out of his arms, half-turning back to her plan of exit, but then she hears it—sobbing. Long, loud, tearless sobs coming from the living room, her main exit.

At first, she thinks its her, bogged down by this ugly emotion Jasper gave her, but she quickly realizes its not.

 _Alice,_ she thinks and unbidden, Jasper’s feelings of resentment and pain rise up in her like a fever. It stabs her and, for a moment, toys with her, the idea of shouting at Alice. That she has no right and how dare she and why would she, but Bella taps that down hard. _No,_ she thinks, pain twisting in her chest. _That’s not me. That’s not mine._ She takes a breath, summoning something cool and calm. _That’s not even Jasper._

She imagines a wall around her mind, barring out all outside influences, like Edward’s mind and Jane’s pain and Alec’s numbing—

God, what would she give to feel numb?

Edward reaches for her wrist. “Let me take you home.”

Bella jerks herself away, limbs coming flat against her body, a clear distinct _do not touch_ reading in her eyes. She thinks of how hours ago he had been holding her tenderly, taking her goodbyes, or hours before that, how he hovered over her, unable to touch.

 Touching would be the death of her. She is repulsed by it.

“I’m going home,” she says even though she’s crying, even through the shaking tears. “I am going to get in my car, drive myself home, and I am going to bed.” She takes a calming breath and exhales through her teeth. Then she looks at him. “And I will do it all alone, alright?”

She doesn’t wait for Edward to answer. She grabs her bag and her keys from where she left them in the hall and strides through the living room, her gait purposeful and jagged. She checks her stride once, turning to the living room to find Alice in a crumbled heap in Carlisle’s lap, Esme and Rosalie around her as tearless sobs rack her tiny body.

She checks herself—

Rosalie’s eyes hover like twin shooters over Esme’s brunette head, daring her to speak, to intervene, to say anything.

Alice looks up from her hands, her beautiful face screwed up in pain, and then she buries herself back into her hands, another rack of sobs and soothing hands.

Bella nearly runs through the door and down the stairs to the driveway. Her fingers fumble with the keys, taking nearly several attempts to get the key in the ignition before the engine turns over and she tears out, down the road and back to town, back to people, back to humans just as terrible and flawed as the Cullens. People who cheat and lie and over-hear, people who say terrible things and love you and curl in like worms in the dirt.

She does not stop until she is home and she has Charlie in her arms. She has to lie, she has to tell him that she and Edward settled it and are, completely and irrevocably, over. She has to say it because there’s no other reason she would cry so hard, in such relief, in such pain.

**-**

Days pass, Alice calls her twice. Bella doesn’t answer.

For as terrible as she feels, she does not want the girl who was supposed to be her best friend.

-

Jacob picks her up on his motorcycle. She is so excited to see him—his dimpled cheeks, his dark eyes, the bike—that she cries when he pulls up to her curb. “Bella? Bella what’s wrong? He asks and touches her shoulder, her arm, her hand.

He puts up the kick stand and holds her, letting her breathe in the scent of him, the feeling of being protected, of his solid, unhurt build. She wraps her arms around him and dries her tears. He is a miracle in the making. Broken rib to show for the war against the newborns, but otherwise unhurt.

“I’m fine,” she wipes under her eyes, drying tears and the burning feeling in her chest. She forces a smile, too wide and too many teeth. “Can we go to the beach or something?”

“Or something.” Jacob echoes, smiling in spite of himself, he reeves the engine when she gets on. She wraps her arms tight around him, mindful incase he is still in pain, but happy once the bike launches full-throttle down the road.

**-**

They go to the beach, the unusually warm day making her regret her jeans, but she has no desire to go digging through her box of Arizona clothes for shorts. So, she rolls her jeans to mid-calf and collects sand in her shoes, putting up with Jacob’s smirks as he knots his laces around his wrist. He walks bare-foot across the rocks and says, conversationally, “These are my last good pair, and my dad will _probably_ kill me if I ruin these too.”

“Sure, sure,” she waves dismissively and smiles at the phrase, second-hand from Jacob, passed down from his father. She notes his smile too and tucks hers back between her teeth, admiring the shoreline and few people dotting the beach, kicking through the water, squealing.

Her eyes flicker up to the cliffside where she practiced diving only months ago. Her stomach swirls at the thought and she looks away, back to the pretty shoreline, the water, the rocks. She turns further up the beach and Jacob follows her, away from people and listening ears.

“It’s so much more peaceful now without Victoria.”

“The red-head?” Jacob inquires and shrugs off her eye-roll. “Yeah, this is one of the spots where we always saw her. The pack hasn’t had to patrol the area as much anymore.”

This rises question in her. “Anymore?”

“Those—” Jacob makes a gesture as if trying to summon the word.

“The Volturi?”

 “Yeah, them. Where did they go after the fight? Seth said he was seen by one of them, but he didn’t attack.” Jacob’s mouth tugs at the corner. “We thought they might show up, so we’ve been keeping up patrols and that. Carlisle called to tell Sam not to worry, but try tell him that.”

Bella is at a bit of a loss with that too. The Volturi left so quickly. Demetri dismissed the shifters as nothing, but cited it briefly after Jasper left, demanding answers and saying Lord Aro might have to investigate.

 _Investigate,_ the word turns her stomach, along with the thought of Aro, cool and creepy, long black hair and cherry eyes, sulking around La Push _investigating_ if that is the proper word. She shivers at the thought, wishes she can offer words of comfort, of solidarity, but more than anything—she wants to see Emily, see Claire, Seth, the boys, make sure they are okay.

“The Cullens are saying you two have an alliance, that you would never harm another vampire,” Jacob snorts, unimpressed. Bella glares. “Unless provoked. It’s not about the truth, Jake, it’s about how it sounds.”

“Sure, sure.” Jacob rolls his shoulders, as if shifting his worries back. Bella watches the gesture, noting that he is wearing a shirt that she had seen on Sam quite a few times, an old band one, washed one too many times to clearly decipher, but still unnaturally green.

It makes her smile, a little, thinking of the wolves sharing a pool of clothes, making up for the torn bits of shirts, pants, and shoes found scattered around La Push recently.

She wonders if she could ask Esme about finding more clothes to offer. Although the smell may be something to be desired, scents can fade, and the Cullens do have an overabundance.

But, as soon as she thinks it, she finds herself shooting down the idea.

She has not been back to the Cullen’s since she left two days ago. Two days of human peace, talking to financial aid officers and calls from her mom about colleges in Florida—smaller universities, near beaches and Disneyland, but it’s the thought that counts.

She can hardly imagine herself there after adjusting to the cold of Forks. She might actually melt in the heat.

“So,” Jacob has his hand behind his back, scratching his neck as he ends another impressive stretch. Bella raises a brow. “You’re not . . . going to become one of them, or anything right?”

The question slams something deep inside of her. An in-the-air question, a declaration to the Volturi, an invitation to something greater. She remembers the weight of Demetri’s gaze, how if she had not been held at the time, she might have crumbled to the floor like her legs were jelly. She thinks of how his lips curled back from his teeth, as if he might have bitten her there and then. Brought an end to the relentless questioning.

“Jake,” She takes a deep breath and considers. “I might not have a choice.”

Jacob’s brows pinch. “But, but you’re not with _him_ anymore.”

She can feel the rush of the words just as he says it, a wrecking ball, a break through her glass house of ignorance. She can hear it in his voice—it’s all Edward’s worries, the pack’s glances, and Emily’s knowing, sad eyes. Jacob likes her. And his attachment to her drove him impulsively, irrefutably in her direction, to protect her, to keep her safe.

She thinks of the talks they had before, about imprints and soulmates, the hesitant, wide-eyed look in her eye as she asked if he had. Jacob’s soul crushing frown as he informs her, he had not.

 _Has_ not.

Somehow, it makes this all worse.

“Jake,” she says and stops once she realizes he’s not walking anymore, just staring at her, shocked as if she had slapped him. She curls her arms around herself. “It’s _bigger_ than that.”

Jacob’s jaw tightens in resolution. “We can protect you—”

Unbidden, imagines of the wolf pack slaughtered appear in her mind. Not just the wolves either, but their families. Everyone. It surges up such a panic in her that she feels like she might burst into tears. She grabs Jacob’s arm, as if he might go charging off to some Volturi hidey-hole now to demand her humanity.

Her grip tightens.

“No! No, no I would never ask you to do that. Not again. The newborn army . . . you and Seth and everyone. It was too much that time. I never want you to do that again. The Volturi are,” She struggles to find the correct words for what they are. With the newborns it had been easy. They were monsters, feral, just the scent of blood sent them into a frenzy. She can see them clearly in her mind, untouchable, immortal, as proud as stone. “They’re ancient. They’ve been killing for years.”

“Just another coven.” Jacob says, lips pursing. “Just another couple of blood-suckers to—”

“Jake, _listen_ to yourself! This is bigger than either of us, bigger than the Cullens, bigger than the newborns, the Volturi are a legion, they’ve been around for _centuries._ They are the reason real werewolves—real werewolves—are _extinct._ ”

Jacob stares at her as she catches her breath, the hysteria in her voice, the ache in her throat from shouting. It felt too real. Too visceral. She hates it.

“They’ll kill you; they’ll kill everyone. Your dad, your sisters, Emily, everyone. Anyone that can possibly _be_ a shifter, don’t you get that? They can track down everyone. They can—don’t do that for me. I would never ask you to do that for me, Jake, listen,” She can feel the pain of tears in her throat, the oppressiveness of the air, her voice lowering to not be over-heard. Jacob’s eyes are wet too, red-rimmed, but tears not yet falling.

 _Good,_ she thinks and moves her hand to take his, to comfort him now that she has made her point. She sucks in a breath.

It has all been so hard. Going through the motions of setting up for college, looking at flights, and speaking with advisors, making all these plans she is not sure she will get to see go through, planting seeds in a garden she might never get to walk in.

 “It’s either I turn,” she says quietly, slowly. “Or I die.” She watches the realization sink in and then realizes it in herself.

Turned or death. Turned or death. She remembers how Caius phrased it. It had only been her ties to Edward and Alice that saved her from death, her love for Edward that she thought was eternal, and the promise of a bite and cold, immortal perfection in a year’s time.

Now, the future is in the air, unclear. At one time, she saw her life as a vampire stretching out before her as a beautiful, thrilling expanse.

Now, she can hardly imagine entering such a cold lonely world.

“There’s no in between.” She whispers, tears stinging her eyes again. She can feel the uneven jags of breath in her lungs now. The pounding against her breastbone. The sweat gathering in her palm where she is holding Jacob. She can see his jaw working, his mind trying to summon what he can say to her—but what can he say? She is caught in this mess she tangled herself in and nothing, not even the wolves, can get her out.

And then—

And then, Jacob says, “Then you should just die than becoming one of them.”

Bella’s hand drops from his, the slow uncurl of fingers, of oneness, of friendship turning tepid between them.

It sparks something in her in that moment, between one labored breath and the next, between the cold resolution of Jake’s expression and then the sudden morph of _regret, apologizes,_ and _“God, Bells, I’m so—”_

She doesn’t hear him. She just sees him.

The boy she grew up with—her greatest friend—her confidant showing his fangs to her.

She recalls Jacob’s earlier stories of wolf anger, how the emotions run wild and feral inside their bodies, new and feral and too animal to ignore the foam at the mouth. Still, she has never _seen_ it, seen evidence of it, yes, but never seen Jacob’s wolfish anger rise to the surface.

Because this was wolfish—because he is sorry—because he doesn’t mean it—she can hear it in his voice already, as he tries to summon up the words to _apologize._

“Then you should just die.” It sounds like a joke, a solution, something she _never_ thought would be said to her, in any context, ever. If she were to splay out the cards of people she knew in her mind, she would gather the people she knew hated her, deeply, carelessly, ceaselessly, and think, “Them. They might say it.”

But Jacob? Never.

She curls her hands into fists, trying to steam the shaking, but it’s useless. She can feel the panic shooting through her, heavy like a bass drum. She can feel the beginnings of tears in her chest, still rising, still hurting, but now renewed with some shaky purpose.

His hands skim her elbows, about to yank her into one of his crushing bear-hugs, all-encompassing heat and the smell of forest and minty body wash, and—

Bella throws one of her fists.

She throws it and at once, she is sorry because she’s not violent, she’s not physical, she believes that conflicts can be resolved with conversations with thoughts and opinions and compromises, but never violence. And because Jake’s rock-hard cheekbones do turn out to be, in fact, rock hard.

-

She endures next a moment of silent screaming. Or, actually screaming, she’s not quite sure. Jacob’s hands are on her, trying to gently pull her off the ground, guide her into his arms, take her back to the bike, to the house, to the hospital—

But all Bella can do is scream.

She pummels him, even with her damaged fist, and keeps screaming. Even though she does more damage to herself than to him, she knows he feels the impact of each hit as clear as a kiss. It is as if all the frustration, all the insanity of the last week, the last month, the last _year_ has been shaken and left to explode on the spot. Jacob did that too her. Jacob pulled the cap.

Later, she will feel regretful. She will hesitate to call and slam the receiver down when she hears his tentative, hopeful voice because he forgives her, she knows he does. She will feel ungrateful, for turning against him when he has given her so much, too much of himself, of his pack, of his family.

But, some things, even regretful things, need to be done.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello! i am procrastinating taking down the bed in the attic that will be mine for the next year.
> 
> can you tell i've been reading a lot of joyce carol oates? although i love her writing, i do not particularly like much of her work. she is someone who, when i read them, fills me with such apathetic hatred for the general human populace.
> 
> that lovely image aside, she does make me want to write realistic, messy relationships, of which i have many. so, how do we deal with these? we let them change us, shape us, and become newer, different, better.
> 
> i never want to wrap my characters in plot armor, so i often just let the plot attack. how am i doing?
> 
> please review, they make me so happy
> 
> \- cafeanna


	9. Chapter 9

In reality, she  _knows_ Leah Clearwater can probably bench her like a dumbbell, but unrealistically Bella keeps fast-walking up the highway, trying to get a signal on her cell. She is also trying not to stumble over her own feet, pain and fury and tears making it hard for her to stay upright.

Leah keeps an even pace.

“Guess it’s not that easy being the vampire-girl!” Leah calls from a couple paces behind her, voice purposefully louder than necessary. “I didn’t even know those stiffs had cellphones!”

Bella curls her fist tighter against her chest and it stings in kind. She feels weighted down, her episode on the beach has made her weak and weary, sand logged and  _tired,_ but she cannot stop now.

Her pride would not allow her to accept a ride from Jacob and she screamed at him for the first few miles he followed her. So enraged, she swung her useless hand at his head.

Leah huffs loudly, as if she’s annoyed. “You know, I don’t even think it’s even broken. I doubt you had enough strength to break it.” Bella remembers the crunch, the pain, the anger of Jake’s comment, and then screaming at him to leave her alone, just leaving her alone for  _once_ —

She really hopes it’s not broken. She  _really_ hopes it’s not.

That’s the  _last_ thing she needs.

Just like walking past the Clearwater house and accidentally attracting the attention of one, Leah Clearwater who, lazing in her front yard, all six foot three of her draped across a lawn chair in her bikini top and cut-offs, took a keen interest.  

“ _Helloooo,_ I’m talking to you!”

“Shut up Leah!”

“Oh, the little vampire-girl has some bite!” A crackle of laughter follows the statement. Somehow, that burns her just as much as Jacob’s comment.  _Then you should just die. Then you should just die._ She turns on her heel, furious.

“No! I just want some quiet, so I can get a-ahhh!” Bella stumbles over her own feet, tumbling into the roadside ditch. Her arms twists under her and from that instant  _pain_ singing through her bones, she knows if her wrist wasn’t broken before, it is now. “Damn.”

Above her, Leah whistles. The skin of her shoulders are alight with the sun beaming behind her. She looks heavenly, almost.

“So, do you need a hand or?” Her pretty dark eyes glint mischievously, but Bella can see a tightening at her mouth. A faint regret maybe? No, that’s just wishful thinking. Leah is the kind of person who regrets nothing and means everything she says with singular, unabashed certainty.

At least, that’s what Emily has always said, a little sadly, dark eyes tearing.

Bella feels the choke of tears again and presses her lips together, holding it in.  _Not now. Not now. Not in front of her._ She tries to get up, but her arm burns a blazing trail of pain from her wrist to her elbow, making her falter. She cuts back a whimper with her teeth and, disoriented, shifts onto her other side.

“Hey, you going to get up or?” Leah calls, sounding almost curious now.

Bella bites her tongue in an effort to stop herself form making noise. She shifts onto her side and pulls her knees up. Pain slithers up her leg, wrapping a clawed hand around her ankle.  _Damn._

“Just—please, go away Leah.”

“Why? Let the cyotes eat ya?”

Tears burn in her throat, so hot she can hardly breathe. “You know what? Yeah, yeah, I want the  _cyotes_ to just eat me. I want to fuckin’ die. I want someone to swoop in and just—” She makes a gesture, lungs burning in her chest. “Just take me out of my misery, so maybe, just maybe someone can be happy, because it’s clear to me—it’s  _very_ clear now—that all I do is drag down the people around me and—and— _fuck up their lives!_ ”

She sits for a moment, uneven jags of breath rising her shoulders. The tears are real now, burning her vision. She ducks her head for a moment, pressing her hands to her face and feeling, in that moment, disgusted. At herself, her vulnerability, her brokenness.

_I don’t want to be this,_ she thinks and the sharp feeling curls within her, taking shape.  _I don’t want to be this person._

She sits for a while like that, paying no heed to the passing cars or if Leah was still there, but eventually, she looks up to check for herself. Her face feels flushed and hot, sweat gathering along her back and chilling as the sun passes behind the clouds.

So quickly the day turns.

She wipes her nose. “Just, just leave me alone, Leah.”

Leah shifts her weight and eyes her cautiously, like a predator unaware if she should approach. It almost makes her proud. Leah pops her hip, hands coming to rest on her waist. “Well, if your self-preservation means that much to you—” She trails off, voice light and airy despite Bella’s earlier speech. “It would weigh on me at night if I left you to die, though.”

“No.” Bella sighs and shifts her weight, wincing at the pain burning her wrist. “When a shifter is around, my friend can’t see if I’m in trouble.” The words twist on her tongue. It seems weird to refer to Alice as a friend now, but it’s all she has. “So, maybe if you leave me alone—”

“—your psycho-vampire friend might be able to save you?” Her head tilts, dark hair spilling over her shoulder.

“Psychic.”

“Same difference. I saw her when we fought those red-eyed vampires. She was something else.” Leah takes a step, gracefully slides down the gravel to kneel in front of her. “Okay, does anything hurt?”

“My wrist.”

“Yeah, we’ve established that. Anything else?”

“My ankle.”

Leah gently tugs at the pant-leg of her jeans to take a look and snorts.

“Ohmigod, are you made of glass?”

* * *

 

Leah hikes her none-too-gently up her back, hands on her thighs and Bella trying to keep a polite distance of her mouth and Leah’s ear, her tee shirt against Leah’s mostly bare back. “—Jake said you were clumsy, but I just figured you tripped over your feet, or dropped one too many glasses.”

She smiles bitterly.

“Nope, I’m certified danger prone. I attract vampires, shifters, and all manner of dangerous beasts.”

She feels Leah snort. “You could lean forward, you know. You’re not gonna hurt me.”

Bella nods to herself, but is suddenly embarrassed for her situation. She left Jacob on the beach, walked two miles up the main road trying to get a signal to call her dad, only to fall in a ditch and twist her ankle. Even more than that, she left herself have a breakdown in front of Leah Clearwater.

This is not her  _best_ day, but lower in the rung than most.

“Thank you for this . . .” She says, almost unsure. “I’m not, I’m not really like this.”

“Yeah,” Leah blows a strand of hair out of her face. “I know.” The comment strikes silence through them, though it is off-handed, it sings with a certain singularity. Of course, Leah knows she is not usually like this. She would be a fool to think so.

Curiosity answers when Leah adds, “You’re all books and good manners, most of the time, but you’re hurt by all the hurt that’s going on around you.” Leah blows a raspberry. “You’re just like my cousin.”

Bella briefly wonders if she should be offended, or still grateful for Leah’s kindness.

“That probably why she likes you so much, you’re so much like her, where I’m,” her voice shifts a bit, still light, but deeper for comedic effect, “the hell-raiser with a chip on her shoulder who turned into a werewolf. Fun combination, huh?”

_Emily,_ Bella’s mind supplies and it suddenly hurts her to think of her like that. All those warm afternoons amid the drama of the newborns and the Cullens, chatting about wolves and cafes and colleges. She never felt like Emily had been trying to surrogate her into the hole that Leah must have left.

Still, the thought was needling.

With nothing much to say to that, she says, “The Volturi say you’re not werewolves.”

Leah turns to look at her from over her shoulder, brows furrowed. “Listen, I don’t need some undead white dude telling me what I am and what I’m not.”

“Fair enough.” Bella relents and Leah hitches her up again, muscles flexing. “Am I heavy?”

“Nah, I was thinking about tossin’ ya.” She says it so casually and before Bella can comment, she continues, “I won’t. You’re good. I think that’s why I didn’t like you at first. You were so good and it was poor little you, in love with a vampire and a wolf in love with you. I thought you were secretly a bitch. But then I realized, you’re just as swept up into this as we are.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I didn’t  _intentionally_  become a werewolf, so I could spend the rest of my life with my ex-boyfriend as the boss of me. You didn’t  _intentionally_ start a war, or lead Jacob on or anything like that.”

Bella closes her eyes. It’s the sinking feeling again. The realization. How stupid, stupid, stupid she feels. “Does . . . everyone know?”

“Well, pack-telepathy is a funny business—”

“I don’t think of him that way.” She says, relenting. “I never have. I don’t understand why or what I could have done.”

“You leaned on him. That’s enough.”

She can feel it again, the tears. The strange feeling of looking back on all her memories of Jacob, their conversations—about Edward, about the pack, about her—and feels the comfort of them with a new, sickening light. Jacob’s advice twisting her away from Edward. Jacob’s pride in his own pack. Jacob’s appraisal of her whenever she did something that swung, as he would have it, in his favor.

She feels sick at the thought of it.

“Are you crying again?”

She bites her lip. “Just drop me here to die.”

“Okay, okay, none of that.” Leah’s grip tightens as if Bella might actually try and climb off. “Listen, Jake’s not a bad guy, but he’s young. He fell for you because you’re his girl-next-door, childhood friend. You two would be that perfect little story to tell at weddings. He loves the idea. He loves you. It’s not your fault.”

“But did I lead him on?” Bella presses. “Did I ever make him think that I might feel the same way? I didn’t even—well, I suspected, but I didn’t think it was real.”

“He created a fantasy in his head, that’s not your problem.” Leah says firmly and turns a corner, shifting a bit for a car to pass them, honking the whole way. “I think he desperately wants to imprint.” Leah is silent for several breathes, and then, “We all need somebody. The change isn’t easy and although we have pack, we all . . . we need somebody to lean on for comfort.”

There’s a moment again, Bella feels it rising up inside her. She wants to say something, but she’s not sure she should. She wants to help.

She remembers Jasper’s face, the blank expression, the anger, the rush of emotions so sharp and real, she would have never wished them on anyone.

But she takes a breath, prepares to be tossed into a roadside ditch, and says, “She misses you,” Bella whispers, but she knows Leah can hear her. She can feel it in the stiffening of Leah’s shoulders, the clutch of her hands, the daunting straightening of the spine. “She misses you a lot.”

Leah doesn’t say anything as they clear the next bend in the road to the border, a shiny black BMW sitting off the side of the road.

The door opens and, to Bella’s surprise, Jasper gets out.

* * *

 

Its one of those odd days in Forks, with the sun pouring out of the cloud bank, and when Jasper steps out of the car, he is shining in that golden glory. His honey blond hair curling at his nape, his eyes, goldenrod and sharp, and his skin, sparkling, faintly.

“I never understand the skin thing, it’s so weird.” Leah mutters, but Bella knows Jasper can hear, though he does not reveal it. He toes the treaty line as if it were an invisible barrier; all vampires, keep out. His expression is stone. “You okay with him?” Leah asks, hand shifting around her thigh.

Bella studies Jasper, now that she’s closer she can see the curiosity and concern in his expression, though he has not voiced it. He must be able to sense her discomfort, just as Leah has.

“Yeah,” Bella relents and squeezes Leah’s shoulder in return. “Yeah, I’ll be fine.”

Leah walks over the treaty line, easy as breathing. Though the Cullens cannot cross into their territory, Leah will cross into theirs with vigor, dance across it and throw a party. Still, she is eyeing Jasper like he might try something as she slides Bella off her back, one muscle arm curling behind her to keep her aloft. Bella shifts her weight off her bad ankle.

“She fell in a ditch.” Leah says unceremoniously. Jasper cocks a brow and flicks his gaze at her. Embarrassment burns at her cheeks and she looks away, unable to meet those eyes which were very nearly dark a couple days ago.

_He must have hunted_ , she realizes, and then images of him, running through the woods, hunting and killing to sate the anger and hunger makes her feel a bit queasy.

“Well?” Leah’s voice is expectant. She glances up to find Leah staring down Jasper. “I can’t hold her up all day. She’s having a hard time standing.”

She turns to Jasper. “Well, no it’s fine—” But he reaches for her, hand taking her undamaged one and the other reaching for her hip. Leah’s warmth falls away to be replaced by Jasper’s cold. It sinks into her, just as any vampire’s would, all encompassing, everywhere. She shivers.

Leah notices.

“Hey, at least you can use your dead self to ice her hand.” The laughter is implied but it does not quite touch her tone. Bella looks back to find Leah’s expression, critical and assured. Bella smiles tightly. Leah notices that too. “Do you want me to take you home instead?”

The question is blatant, too late and rude in a way Bella wishes she can be. Jasper says nothing for several seconds and though he does not look apt to argue, his hand stays steady on her elbow. “I could call someone.” He offers, speaking for the first time. Its funny, she always expects his voice to be small, tinny and soft from lack of use. But Jasper’s voice is a baritone, a major in command.

“I’m good, Leah, but thanks.”

Leah nods once and let’s her arm drop. “Whatever you say, vampire-girl.”

Without another thought, she pulls her arm away from Jasper and sidesteps him. To her great relief and effort, she stays upright. She tests a few more steps and finds that she  _can_ walk on her ankle, albeit gingerly. It’s not broken, at least. She makes it halfway around the car before she turns, eyes flicking from Jasper’s quiet contemplation to Leah’s cocked brow.

“Can you just drive me home? I’m having a terrible day.”  

* * *

 

As Bella settles in for what she suspects will be a quiet ride home, Jasper turns to her and asks how she hurt her hand. Which is a fine, perfunctory question, if she felt like answering it. For as long as she has known Jasper—and that is not quite long at all—she expects that he would give her silence.

“How did you hurt your hand?” He asks again and, when she doesn’t answer, he studies her, in that weird way that he does with humans. He repeats his question, a touch louder this time as if she had not heard. Bella lifts her chin. She sees cars coming.

“Eyes on the road.”

Jasper turns his attention. “You’re angry with me.”

Bella shifts back nearly against the door, staring at him. “You used your powers on me.”

Jasper winces at the sound of her voice, the rough, quiet accusation of it; conveying how mauled she felt by the force of his anger. “Not my finest moment, I’ll admit.”

For some reason—the arrogance, the blasé attitude—his answer  _burns_ her. It helps her find that anger in her, the same from before, the kind that drove her to yell at a vampire, punch a werewolf, and scream down a mountain. She needs that anger. It keeps her going.

“No, not your finest moment.” She snaps, she twists further, putting her back completely to the door behind her. She moves the chest strap of the seatbelt aside, all the while minding her arm. “And  _completely_ not okay! I cannot even think Alice’s name right now without feeling sick.”

Jasper seems to cowl under the force of her, but only for a moment. “You managed to block out most of my influence.” He says quietly and then, gentler, “Your mind is a steel trap of a shield. Anything you feel now is entirely your own.”

That gives her pause.

She considers he might be lying, but she remembers the way Aro had leaned over her hand, clasping her warm flesh in his papery, cold hands. A low hum of curiosity thrumming in his throat. “A shield,” he breathed against her skin. “Magnifico.”

She thinks about the vampires with the psychic gifts—Edward’s mind reading, Jane’s pain, Alec’s numbing. She is impervious to all these things. But not Jasper’s empathy and emotional influence. He can scent emotions like a bloodhound and shift them to his own will.

She thinks of Alice—bitterly—and the unheard messages on her phone, the unread texts, and unanswerable house calls.

She thinks of Alice—the starting force in all of this—and feels sick, sad, and sorry.

“That makes no sense,” Bella says finally. “If my mind can keep psychic powers from touching me, why can yours?”

“My gifts aren’t really used for harm.”

Bella’s brow crinkles. “How is emotional manipulation different then?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, do you just make people feel happy and content all the time? Or, was all those horrible feelings just a first time for you?” The corner of Jasper’s mouth tucks in between his teeth, buttoning in a secret. “Well?”

“It’s not—it’s not the first time. However, I don’t like to do it.” Jasper rolls smoothly to a stop in a residential area, checks both ways and makes a right turn. Bella’s teeth clench. “Your mind shoved out whatever I tried to shift around.”

“You do realize you essentially tried to stuff me with all your bad feelings like a Thanksgiving turkey, right?” She stares at him as he considers this, drinks it in. “Not your finest moment, huh?”

“That was unfair. I shouldn’t have done that and I’m sorry.” Jasper says again and Bella studies his face in profile, the angular nose and set jaw. Beyond the window, she sees a mile marker pass by.

She turns in her seat, looking around. “Wait. W-where are we going?” She looks around wildly, but the residential area has shifted into a backwoods trail. All around her is the Forks forest in all its greenery. She turns to Jasper again, betrayed. “Where are we going?”

Now, it’s Jasper’s turn to look bewildered, as if he did not know not telling her where they were going is well and normal.  _Well,_ she thinks annoyed,  _I suppose he never had to tell Alice._ “To the house,” he says calmly and Bella can feel the residual wave of that calm drifting over her.  “Carlisle needs to have a look at you.”

Bella’s mouth twists up and she thinks of what Jasper said before, a steel trap. Her mind is a steel trap. Keeping her insides in and her outsides out. She slams down hard around herself, even making a physical barrier of pulling her damaged hand closer to her chest.

She glares at him and waits.

Nope, no calm there.

She wonders if she should be satisfied or horrified by the result. Jasper peers at her as they round a corner which does, in fact, lead to the Cullen house. “Well, you’re getting good at that.”

“Stop the car.” She says and, when Jasper first doesn’t comply, she puts her hand on the door handle. “Stop the car or I’m jumping out.” Jasper glances at her again, as if trying to gage her reaction. She curls her fingers around the handle. “Jasper.”

“I’m looking for a place to pull over—” And then he jerks to the side of the road, very nearly taking them into a ditch and if Bella had not already been clenched with fight, her head might have knocked against the glass.

Once Jasper puts the car in park, he takes his hands off the wheel and looks at her. He tilts his head as if to say,  _now what?_ and Bella sucks in a quick breath.  

“I am getting really tired of all this.” She says finally.

“Us vampires?” Jasper queries. “Yes, we’re quite a handful.”

“No, people trying to  _handle_ everything for me. I didn’t ask you to take me to Carlisle, I asked you to take me home. I have medical insurance from my dad’s work until I’m twenty-five, thank you.”

Jasper’s expression crunches. “Yes, but what are you going to say to your father?”

“My father?”

Jasper winces. “It was not a jab, I promise.”

“No, Charlie has been through enough. He can handle these things.” She points to her hand.   
“These normal things. Not me—me running off whenever something happens. This is normal. Broken hand and sprained ankle. I can handle this. He can handle this.” Of course, the act of how these happened may be a bit harder to swallow, but still. Normal.

“I did not think of that. I thought you would prefer he did not know.”

“Well, you could have asked.”

Jasper drags his hands through his hair, flopping the honeyed gold over. He looks at her then, hands on seven and five. “Do you want me to take you to the hospital or home?”

“Hospital.” She says after a moment. Her wrist is swelling. She must have damaged it too, then. She can feel the pain of it beginning to trickle in under the adrenaline; the searing, sharp, disjointed pain that burns a jagged trail from her knuckles to her wrist bone. She remembers hitting Jake again with that hand. The awful things she said.

Jasper makes a U-turn and starts driving back to town. Without looking at her, she can tell he wants to say something. She realizes she never told him how she broke her hand. She told Leah, or well, screamed it at her, but that was more anger than necessity.

She doesn’t want to tell Jasper.

Her ankle throbs in kind.

“Why were you at the border, Jasper?” She asks, shifting to sit normally in her seat. The strap of the seatbelt settles comfortably over her chest. She looks at him and realizes how close she is. Maybe her back pinned against the door is the more favorable option.

Jasper doesn’t answer for a long moment. “I was driving around when I saw you and Jacob on that bike. I thought I might wait for you and try to apologize.”

“You could have called.”

“Would you have answered?”

“No.” She says and is shocked by how true it feels. She sits quietly for a long moment as Jasper inches back into town. They seem to hit every red light as they go.

Jasper flicks his gaze at her as they pull to a stop. “It feels like you’re saying goodbye.”

The non-accusation filters through her and with it she feels every moment she has spent with Edward, each sweet kiss, each argument; she feels Charlie’s embrace, his pride, his joy; she feels Alice, the good, the bad, but mostly the good. She thinks of the friends she has made and left. “So, what if I am?”

The light flickers green, but Jasper soon noses up to another red light.

“The Volturi haven’t left town yet.”

The thought settles in her thick and cold, filling her up from the inside. She chews her lip and lean her shoulder against the door. “Well,” she says, “before that happens, I’m going to the hospital to get my hand checked out.”

“So that’s it then?”

“What’s it?”

Jasper’s lips part and then press together again. For a moment, he looks like the sullen teenager he pretends to be. Discontent and moody. “Something Alice said,” he says quietly. Bella tips her head, half-annoyed, half-done with this conversation. Part of her wants to bolt out of the car and walk herself to the hospital.

Another part of her, tiny and tucked away under her heart, is curious. 

“What did she see?” She asks.

Alice’s visions have always been a tossup. People—human’s especially—can change their wills like the wind, a constant breeze one moment and then the next a maelstrom blowing down the gale. For the longest time, her favorite game had been waiting for Alice’s visions, however small, to come to fruition. A twist on a television show. A switch in the weather. An outfit that surprisingly worked.

There was the larger stuff, too. Like Alice’s visions of her as a vampire. Those were the ones she never shared; the ones Edward feared. In a weird way, Edward got his wish, however partly. Bella would live her life as a human, but Edward would not be with her.

Or, if the Volturi got involved she will loose everything and have to learn Italian.

Jasper looks at her then, his smile pleasant and then a bit sad as he says, “You have become disillusioned of us.”

Bella can feel her pulse quicken in her chest. That short, painful feeling of something rude and sharp falling into place. Her wrist throbs from where she has it pinned against her chest. “I’m seeing you as people,” she says after a moment. “Just people with flaws and problems of your own. It was me who . . . painted you guys up as these perfect beings.”

“Immortality will do that to you.” Jasper says thoughtfully, fingers drumming against the wheel. “After so long being fixed on one thing or one person, something has to give. You can’t remain stagnant all your life.”

They get a green light again. Then, fifty feet to a stale yellow light.

“I also wanted to say that I’m not mad for what you said in Carlisle’s office.” Jasper’s hands loosen on the wheel and slide into his lap. He steeples them once, twice, but keeps them on his thigh. He uses his hands when he speaks. Bella has never noticed. “I actually think you are right. It was right. Alice and I— _we_ love each other, but there is Demetri.”

_But there is Demetri._ Bella mulls over the sentence in her mind. It sounds like it could be a turn of phrase. When it rains, it pours. We love each other, but there is Demetri.

She wants to ask what they will do. Will they work it out? Talk together? Try to go back to normal? Will they break up? Divorce? Never see each other again?

_It’s not my place,_ she thinks as she watches Jasper’s expression go purposefully blank. Like the emotions he can control, he reins back his own. An outsider might think he feels nothing, but Bella felt that tidal wave of emotion before and feels sorry.

Jasper does not smile when he looks at her. “I am not actually comfortable talking about it.” She nods, solemnly. “However, I wanted to say that I am sorry. I should not have used my power on you like that. I frightened you because I let me emotions get the better of me. And I am sorry.”

They sit there for a long moment, sitting in a car, hitting every stop light and Bella closes her eyes, feeling embarrassed and confused and angry. Still angry. But she takes Jasper’s apology. She accepts it.

Then, she turns to him and asks: “Can you take me to Carlisle?”

Jasper looks at her, half-curious, half-frowning and then makes another U-turn. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello! i started my new night job which is great, but unfortunately all the big-kid office's i need to go to are opened early.
> 
> we're on the final stretch folks! i remember cooking up this idea and just running with it because I had not pre-written anything past chapter six. However, we have made a lovely round-about in my vague "Bella seeing the Cullens as people" venture. *truth hurts by lizzo plays in the distance* i am also really happy to see this twilight resurgence. maybe i'll post my rosalie/bella fic bc i like writing about angst girls who have pieces that just don't fit right.
> 
> it has been a beast of a month, my readers. first, the move. second, grad school. third, loan sharks. fourth, missing roommate but that is neither here nor there. for now, i'm working my night job, making money, going to classes, and life will be rosy. i think it's important to see the beauty in all the crazy. me getting my big-girl life together (as you have read) burying some things and tentatively moving on. or, in bella's case, breaking out of a bad situation and being faced with opinions, accusations, and opposing forces, which, you know, is basically a long metaphor for adulthood. 
> 
> please review, they make me so happy & i'm sitting her for four more hours
> 
> -cafeanna

**Author's Note:**

> you know what to do ;)


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